(A) dependability modeling of software under hardware faults digitized system in nuclear power plants

Abstract

An analytic approach to the dependability evaluation of software in the operational phase is suggested in this work with special attention to the physical fault effects on the software dependability : The physical faults considered are memory faults and the dependability measure in question is the reliability. The model is based on the simple reliability theory and the graph theory with the path decomposition micromodel. The model represents an application software with a graph consisting of nodes and arcs that probabilistically determine the flow from node to node. Through proper transformation of nodes and arcs, the graph can be reduced to a simple two-node graph and the software failure probability is derived from this graph. This model can be extended to the software system which consists of several complete modules without modification. The derived model is validated by the computer simulation, where the software is transformed to a probabilistic control flow graph. Simulation also shows a different viewpoint of software failure behavior. Using this model, we predict the reliability of an application software and a software system in a digitized system(ILS system) in the nuclear power plant and show the sensitivity of the software reliability to the major physical parameters which affect the software failure in the normal operation phase. The derived model is validated by the computer simulation, where the software is transformed to a probabilistic control flow graph. Simulation also shows a different viewpoint of software failure behavior. Using this model, we predict the reliablility of an application software and a software system in a digitized system (ILS system) is the nuclear power plant and show the sensitivity of the software reliability to the major physical parameters which affect the software failure in the normal operation phase. This modeling method is particularly attractive for medium size programs such as software used in digitized systems...