Architecture-Centric Dependability Analysis for I&C Safety Systems in NPP: A Case Study

Abstract

System architecture plays a major role in achieving the safety, availability and reliability requirements of the system. Any violation of these requirements detected at a later stage of the system development life cycle may call for architectural modification, which can be expensive in terms of both cost and time. This paper presents a case study of architecture-centric dependability analysis based on rigorous model checking techniques. A large computer-based safety system of a PWR is considered for this study. This work demonstrates that architectural dependability analysis is feasible for large computer based system (CBS) and it increases the level of confidence in meeting the system dependability requirements at the early stage of development.