A Dependability Modeling of Software under Memory Faults for Digital System in Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

In this work, an analytic approach to the dependability of software in the operational phase is suggested with special attention to the hardware fault effects on the software behavior : The hardware 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 which represents the software with graph composed of nodes and arcs. Through proper transformation, the graph can be reduced to a simple two-node graph and the software reliability is derived from this graph. Using this model, we predict the reliability of an application software in the digital system (ILS) 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. We also found that the effects of the hardware faults on the software failure should be considered for predicting the software dependability accurately in operation phase, especially for the software which is executed frequently. This modeling method is particularly attractive for the medium size programs such as the microprocessor-based nuclear safety logic program.