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A conservative confidence bound for the probability of failure on demand of a software-based system based on failure-free tests of its components

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  • Bishop, Peter
  • Povyakalo, Andrey

Abstract

The standard approach to deriving the confidence bound for the probability of failure on demand (pfd) of a software-based system is to perform statistical tests on the whole system as a “black-box†. In practice, performing tests on the entire system may be infeasible for logistical reasons, such as lack of availability of all component subsystems at the same time during implementation. This paper presents a general method for deriving a confidence bound for the overall system from successful independent tests on individual system components. In addition, a strategy is presented for optimizing the number of tests allocated to system components for an arbitrary system architecture that minimizes the confidence bound for the system pfd. For some system architectures, we show that an optimum allocation of component tests is as effective as tests on the complete system for demonstrating a given confidence bound. The confidence bound calculation makes use of many of the concepts used in the reliability analysis of hardware structures, but unlike a conventional hardware analysis, the method does not presume statistical independence of failures between software components, so the confidence bound calculation for the software should always be conservative.

Suggested Citation

  • Bishop, Peter & Povyakalo, Andrey, 2020. "A conservative confidence bound for the probability of failure on demand of a software-based system based on failure-free tests of its components," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reensy:v:203:y:2020:i:c:s0951832020305615
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2020.107060
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Bishop, Peter & Povyakalo, Andrey, 2017. "Deriving a frequentist conservative confidence bound for probability of failure per demand for systems with different operational and test profiles," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 246-253.
    2. Bishop, Peter & Bloomfield, Robin & Littlewood, Bev & Popov, Peter & Povyakalo, Andrey & Strigini, Lorenzo, 2014. "A conservative bound for the probability of failure of a 1-out-of-2 protection system with one hardware-only and one software-based protection train," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 61-68.
    3. Richard E. Barlow & Alexander S. Wu, 1978. "Coherent Systems with Multi-State Components," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 3(4), pages 275-281, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Popov, Peter, 2021. "Conservative reliability assessment of a 2-channel software system when one of the channels is probably perfect," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).

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