• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.29 no.12
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• pp.860-872
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• 2002

Fault tree analysis is the most widely used saftly analysis technique in industry. However, the analysis is often applied manually, and there is no systematic and automated approach available to validate the analysis result. In this paper, we demonstrate that a real-time model checker UPPAAL is useful in formally specifying the required behavior of safety-critical software and to validate the accuracy of manually constructed fault trees. Functional requirements for emergency shutdown software for a nuclear power plant, named Wolsung SDS2, are used as an example. Fault trees were initially developed by a group of graduate students who possess detailed knowledge of Wolsung SDS2 and are familiar with safety analysis techniques including fault tree analysis. Functional requirements were manually translated in timed automata format accepted by UPPAAL, and the model checking was applied using property specifications to evaluate the correctness of the fault trees. Our application demonstrated that UPPAAL was able to detect subtle flaws or ambiguities present in fault trees. Therefore, we conclude that the proposed approach is useful in augmenting fault tree analysis.