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Institute
An apparatus and method for analyzing availability of a system including subsystems each having at least one failure mode with a corresponding failure effect on the system are provided. The apparatus includes a degraded mode tree generation unit configured to automatically generate a degraded mode tree. The degraded mode tree includes at least one degraded mode element representing a degraded system state of the system that deviates from a normal operation state of the system based on a predetermined generic system meta model stored in a database including Failure Mode and Effects Analysis elements representing subsystems, failure modes, failure effects, and diagnostic measures. The apparatus also includes a processor configured to evaluate the generated degraded mode tree for calculation of the availability of the system.
A method for automated qualification of a safety critical system including a plurality of components is provided. A functional safety behavior of each component is represented by an associated component fault tree element. The method includes automatically performing a failure port mapping of output failure modes to input failure modes of component fault tree elements based on a predetermined generic fault type data model stored in a database.
A method for automated recertification of a safety critical system with at least one altered functionality is provided. The method includes providing a failure propagation model of the safety critical system. The method also includes updating the failure propagation model of the safety critical system according to the at least one altered functionality using inner port dependency traces between inports and outports of a failure propagation model element representing the at least one altered functionality. The method includes calculating top events of the updated failure propagation model, and comparing the calculated top events with predetermined system requirements to recertify the safety critical system.
A method for integrated model-based safety analysis includes integrating a safety analysis model into a system development model of a safety-critical system. The system development model includes model components. The safety analysis model models a failure logic separately for each of the model components. The method includes representing dependencies among the model components with a design structure matrix. The design structure matrix represents each of the model components with a row and a column and shows dependencies between model components with corresponding entries. The method also includes sequencing the design structure matrix, and identifying at least one dependency loop and loop components in the sequenced design structure matrix. The loop components are part of the at least one dependency loop.
The growing size and complexity of software in embedded systems poses new challenges to the safety assessment of embedded control systems. In industrial practice, the control software is mostly treated as a black box during the system's safety analysis. The appropriate representation of the failure propagation of the software is a pressing need in order to increase the accuracy of safety analyses. However, it also increase the effort for creating and maintaining the safety analysis models (such as fault trees) significantly. In this work, we present a method to automatically generate Component Fault Trees from Continuous Function Charts. This method aims at generating the failure propagation model of the detailed software specification. Hence, control software can be included into safety analyses without additional manual effort required to construct the safety analysis models of the software. Moreover, safety analyses created during early system specification phases can be verified by comparing it with the automatically generated one in the detailed specification phased.
INSiDER: Incorporation of system and safety analysis models using a dedicated reference model
(2016)
In order to enable model-based, iterative design of safety-relevant systems, an efficient incorporation of safety and system engineering is a pressing need. Our approach interconnects system design and safety analysis models efficiently using a dedicated reference model. Since all information are available in a structured way, traceability between the model elements and consistency checks enable automated synchronization to guarantee that information within both kind of models are consistent during the development life-cycle.
Safety assurance is a major challenge in the design of today's complex embedded systems and future Cyber-physical systems. Especially changes in a system's architectural design invalidate former safety analyses and require an adaptation of related safety analysis models in order to restore consistency. In this work, we present an approach for automatically generating mappings between failure ports in compositional safety analysis models. This way, automatic and system-wide safety analyses are enabled that can be easily repeated after making modifications to the system's architecture. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach using a case study from the automotive domain.
Automating compositional safety analysis using a failure type taxonomy for component fault trees
(2016)
Safety assurance is a major challenge in the design of today’s complex embedded systems and future Cyber-physical systems. Changes in a system’s architectural design invalidate former safety analyses and require a manual adaptation of related safety analysis models in order to restore consistency. In this work, we present an approach for automating the compositional assembly of Component Fault Trees by automatically generating mappings between their input and output failure modes. Therefore, we propose a taxonomy of failure types for annotating model elements and deriving a model of the failure propagation. This way, automatic and system-wide safety analyses can be executed and easily repeated after making modifications to the system’s architecture. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach using an example ethylene vaporization unit from an industrial domain.
Safety assurance is a major challenge in the design of modern embedded systems that has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Growing system sizes and the rise of Cyber-Physical systems confront safety engineers with large sets of configurations to be analyzed. Current approaches are usually carried out at design time and do not address the need for automated assessments in the field. With Component Fault Trees (CFTs) there exists a component-based methodology that enables an efficient modular composition of safety artifacts. The combined model is a system-level CFT that can be analyzed by means of popular Fault Tree Analysis techniques that are widely accepted in the industry. However, when composing models, their interfacing elements must be connected manually which impedes the automation of the procedure. In this work, we introduce the notion of flow types that represent a particular kind of component interaction and define a taxonomy of related failure behavior. By annotating CFTs with types, a machine-readable vocabulary is provided that allows for an automated interconnection of their interfaces. This way, the automatic composition of models according to system architecture is enabled, allowing for automated safety assessments on system-level. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach using an example ethylene vaporization unit.
In safety analysis for safety-critical embedded systems, methods such as FMEA and fault trees (FT) are strongly established in practice. However, the current shift towards model-based development has resulted in various new safety analysis methods, such as Component Integrated Fault Trees (CFT). Industry demands to know the benefits of these new methods. To compare CFT to FT, we conducted a controlled experiment in which 18 participants from industry and academia had to apply each method to safety modeling tasks from the avionics domain.
Although the analysis of the solutions showed that the use of CFT did not yield a significantly different number of correct or incorrect solutions, the participants subjectively rated the modeling capacities of CFT significantly higher in terms of model consistency, clarity, and maintainability. The results are promising for the potential of CFT as a model-based approach.