The model-based and bidirectional software failure mode and effect analysis method

Abstract

Software failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is very important to improve the reliability and safety of the critical-safety software. However, traditional FMEA methods are difficult to identify and analyzing the modes which caused by the dynamic logical information between functions or interfaces, such as the transformation, synchronization, timing constraints, and the software-hardware interaction. To solve this problem, we present a Model-based SFMEA method. This proposed method analyzes the failure modes bidirectionally. First this method constructs the system requirement models, including the external IO interfaces model, the external environment factor model, mission scene model and so on. Then this method constructs the software requirement models, including the state transformation model, the control logic model of single function, the dynamic interaction model between functions, the function hierarchy model and so on. Then based on the system requirement models, we can identify and analyze the system hazards. And based on the software requirement models, we can identify and analyze the software failure modes. Finally, we apply this model-based FMEA on the flight control software. The application results show that the proposed FMEA method can identify and analyze the system hazards and software modes more effectively.