• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.570-581
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• 2018

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.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.49-57
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• 1999

It has been a critical issue to predict the safety critical software reliability in nuclear engineering area. For many years, many researches have focused on the quantification of software reliability and there have been many models developed to quantify software reliability. Most software reliability models estimate the reliability with the failure data collected during the test assuming that the test environments well represent the operation profile. User's interest is however on the operational reliability rather than on the test reliability. The experiences show that the operational reliability is higher than the test reliability. With the assumption that the difference in reliability results from the change of environment, from testing to operation, testing environment factors comprising the aging factor and the coverage factor are developed in this paper and used to predict the ultimate operational reliability with the failure data in testing phase. It is by incorporating test environments applied beyond the operational profile into testing environment factors. The application results show that the proposed method can estimate the operational reliability accurately.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1462-1470
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• 2020

Reliability in safety-critical systems and equipment is of vital importance, so the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been widely used for many years in the nuclear industry to address reliability in a quantitative manner. As many nuclear power plants (NPPs) become digitalized, evaluating the reliability of safety-critical software has become an emerging issue. Due to a lack of available methods, in many conventional PSA models only hardware reliability is addressed with the assumption that software reliability is perfect or very high compared to hardware reliability. This study focused on developing a new method of safety-critical software reliability quantification, derived from hardware-software integrated environment testing. Since the complexity of hardware and software interaction makes the possible number of test cases for exhaustive testing well beyond a practically achievable range, an importance-oriented testing method that assures the most efficient test coverage was developed. Application to the test of an actual NPP reactor protection system demonstrated the applicability of the developed method and provided insight into complex software-based system reliability.

• The Journal of Information Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.47-64
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• 2007

Finite failure NHPP models presented in the literature exhibit either constant, monotonic increasing or monotonic decreasing failure occurrence rates per fault. Accurate predictions of software release times, and estimation of the reliability and availability of a software product require quantification of a critical element of the software testing process : test coverage. This model called enhanced non-homogeneous poission process(ENHPP). In this paper, exponential coverage and S-coverage model was reviewed, proposes the exponentiated exponential coverage reliability model, which maked out efficiency substituted for gamma and Weibull model(2 parameter shape illustrated by Gupta and Kundu(2001). In this analysis of software failure data, algorithm to estimate the parameters used to maximum likelihood estimator and bisection method, model selection based on SSE statistics for the sake of efficient model, was employed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.80.1-80
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• 2001

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.7-13
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• 2007

Finite failure NHPP models presented in the literature exhibit either constant, monotonic increasing or monotonic decreasing failure occurrence rates per fault. Accurate predictions of software release times, and estimation of the reliability and availability of a software product require quantification of a critical element of the software testing process : test coverage. This model called Enhanced non-homogeneous poission process (ENHPP). In this paper, exponential coverage and S-shaped model was reviewed, proposes the superposition model, which maked out efficiency application for software reliability. Algorithm to estimate the parameters used to maximum likelihood estimator and bisection method, model selection based on SSE statistics for the sake of efficient model, was employed.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.115-120
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• 2008

Accurate predictions of software release times, and estimation of the reliability and availability of a software product require quantification of a critical element of the software testing process： Change-point problem. In this paper, exponential (Goel-Okumoto) model was reviewed, proposes the percentile change-point problem, which maked out efficiency application for software reliability. Algorithm to estimate the parameters used to maximum likelihood estimator and bisection method, model selection based on SSE statistics, for the sake of efficient model, was employed. Using NTDS data, The numerical example of percentilechange-point problemi s presented.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.404-409
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• 2008

This paper consists largely of two parts: the first part introduces the revised railway human reliability analysis (R-HRA) method which is to be used under the railway risk assessment framework, and the second part presents the features of a computer software which was developed for aiding the R-HRA process. The revised R-HRA method supplements the original R-HRA method by providing a specific task analysis guideline and a classification of performance shaping factors (PSFs) to support a consistent analysis between analysts. The R-HRA software aids the analysts in gathering information for HRA, qualitative error prediction including identification of external error modes and internal error modes, quantification of human error probability, and reporting the overall analysis results. The revised R-HRA method and software are expected to support the analysts in an effective and efficient way in analysing human error potential in railway event or accident scenarios.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.441-447
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• 2017

Objective : Computed tomography (CT)-based method of three dimensional (3D) analysis ($MIMICS^{(R)}$, Materialise, Leuven, Belgium) is reported as very useful software for evaluation of OPLL, but its reliability and reproducibility are obscure. This study was conducted to evaluate the accuracy of $MIMICS^{(R)}$ system, and inter- and intra-observer reliability in the measurement of OPLL. Methods : Three neurosurgeons independently analyzed the randomly selected 10 OPLL cases with medical image processing software ($MIMICS^{(R)}$) which create 3D model with Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) data from CT images after brief explanation was given to examiners before the image construction steps. To assess the reliability of inter- and intra-examiner intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), 3 examiners measured 4 parameters (volume, length, width, and length) in 10 cases 2 times with 1-week interval. Results : The inter-examiner ICCs among 3 examiners were 0.996 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.987-0.999) for volume measurement, 0.973 (95% CI, 0.907-0.978) for thickness, 0.969 (95% CI, 0.895-0.993) for width, and 0.995 (95% CI, 0.983-0.999) for length. The intra-examiner ICCs were 0.994 (range, 0.991-0.996) for volume, 0.996 (range, 0.944-0.998) for length, 0.930 (range, 0.873-0.947) for width, and 0.987 (range, 0.985-0.995) for length. Conclusion : The medical image processing software ($MIMICS^{(R)}$) provided detailed quantification OPLL volume with minimal error of inter- and intra-observer reliability in the measurement of OPLL.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.471-482
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• 2012

To assess the risk of nuclear power plant operation and to determine the risk impact of digital systems, there is a need to quantitatively assess the reliability of the digital systems in a justifiable manner. The Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) is a tool which can reveal shortcomings of the NPP design in general and PRA analysts have not had sufficient guiding principles in modelling particular digital components malfunctions. Currently digital I&C systems are mostly analyzed simply and conventionally in PRA, based on failure mode and effects analysis and fault tree modelling. More dynamic approaches are still in the trial stage and can be difficult to apply in full scale PRA-models. As basic events CPU failures, application software failures and common cause failures (CCF) between identical components are modelled.The primary goal is to model dependencies. However, it is not clear which failure modes or system parts CCF:s should be postulated for. A clear distinction can be made between the treatment of protection and control systems. There is a general consensus that protection systems shall be included in PRA, while control systems can be treated in a limited manner. OECD/NEA CSNI Working Group on Risk Assessment (WGRisk) has set up a task group, called DIGREL, to develop taxonomy of failure modes of digital components for the purposes of PRA. The taxonomy is aimed to be the basis of future modelling and quantification efforts. It will also help to define a structure for data collection and to review PRA studies.