Safety Analysis of Life Critical Software Systems: a Case Study of Nuclear Power Plant

Abstract

Current life-critical system designs fully incorporate digital instrumentation and control systems. Due to safety significance of such systems, these need to be designed carefully to ensure their safety requirements. However, digital systems have some unique characteristics, such as using software, and may have different failure causes and/or modes than the analog systems; hence, their incorporation into life critical systems, safety analysis entails special challenges. The strategy to perform safety analysis using Petri net for full proof design is discussed in this paper. The technique is demonstrated on a safety critical system of nuclear power plant. © 2017 IETE.