The Method of Failure Analysis for Safety-Critical System Software Based on Formalization

Abstract

As the digital instrument control system in the field of security become more and more widely used, the reliability of the software has drawn great attention. Identifying and eliminating potential errors in software is an effective way to improve software reliability. Most of the methods for identify software failures at this stage are evolved from the traditional failure analysis methods, such as fault tree, Failure Mode Effect Analysis methods (FMEA). These traditional failure analysis methods encountered some problems, such as the credibility of the results depends heavily on the skills of the executive staff and the analysis workload is huge. In this study, a formal method was adopted to describe the software design, and formal tools were used to find the software failure path. Formal technology is based on rigorous mathematical theory, and it is easy to carry out by computer processing, which can greatly reduce the impact of executive staff awareness on the analysis results. In addition, using formal tools can effectively reduce the workload of executives.