Analyzing dynamic fault trees derived from model-based system architectures

Abstract

Dependability-critical systems, such as digital instrumentation and control systems in nuclear power plants, necessitate engineering techniques and tools to provide assurances of their safety and reliability. Determining system reliability at the architectural design phase is important since it may guide design decisions and provide crucial information for trade-off analysis and estimating system cost. Despite this, reliability and system engineering remain separate disciplines and engineering processes by which the dependability analysis results may not represent the designed system. In this article we provide an overview and application of our approach to build architecture-based, dynamic system models for dependability-critical systems and then automatically generate dynamic fault trees (DFT) for comprehensive, tool-supported reliability analysis. Specifically, we use the Architectural Analysis and Design Language (AADL) to model the structural, behavioral and failure aspects of the system in a composite architecture model. From the AADL model, we seek to derive the DFT(s) and use Galileo's automated reliability analyses to estimate system reliability. This approach alleviates the dependability engineering - systems engineering knowledge expertise gap, integrates the dependability and system engineering design and development processes and enables a more formal, automated and consistent DFT construction. We illustrate this work using an example based on a dynamic digital feed-water control system for a nuclear reactor.