Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Development of simulation-based testing environment for safety-critical software

  • Lee, Sang Hun (Department of Mechanical Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)) ;
  • Lee, Seung Jun (School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)) ;
  • Park, Jinkyun (Integrated Safety Assessment Division, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI)) ;
  • Lee, Eun-chan (Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd.) ;
  • Kang, Hyun Gook (Department of Mechanical Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI))
  • Received : 2018.01.30
  • Accepted : 2018.02.28
  • Published : 2018.05.25
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Abstract

Recently, a software program has been used in nuclear power plants (NPPs) to digitalize many instrumentation and control systems. To guarantee NPP safety, the reliability of the software used in safetycritical instrumentation and control systems must be quantified and verified with proper test cases and test environment. In this study, a software testing method using a simulation-based software test bed is proposed. The test bed is developed by emulating the microprocessor architecture of the programmable logic controller used in NPP safety-critical applications and capturing its behavior at each machine instruction. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated via a case study. To represent the possible states of software input and the internal variables that contribute to generating a dedicated safety signal, the software test cases are developed in consideration of the digital characteristics of the target system and the plant dynamics. The method provides a practical way to conduct exhaustive software testing, which can prove the software to be error free and minimize the uncertainty in software reliability quantification. Compared with existing testing methods, it can effectively reduce the software testing effort by emulating the programmable logic controller behavior at the machine level.

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References

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