A Automated Tool for Supporting FMEAs of Digital Systems
Although designs of digital systems can be very different from each other, they typically use many of the same types of generic digital components. Determining the impacts of the failure modes of these generic components on a digital system can be used to support development of a reliability model of the system. A novel approach was proposed for such a purpose by decomposing the system into a level of the generic digital components and propagating failure modes to the system level, which generally is time-consuming and difficult to implement. To overcome the associated issues of implementing the proposed FMEA approach, an automated tool for a digital feedwater control system (DFWCS) has been developed in this study. The automated FMEA tool is in nature a simulation platform developed by using or recreating the original source code of the different module software interfaced by input and output variables that represent physical signals exchanged between modules, the system, and the controlled process. For any given failure mode, its impacts on associated signals are determined first and the variables that correspond to these signals are modified accordingly by the simulation. Criteria are also developed, as part of the simulation platform, to determine whether the system has lost its automatic control function, which is defined as a system failure in this study. The conceptual development of the automated FMEA support tool can be generalized and applied to support FMEAs for reliability assessment of complex digital systems.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission/Non-Nureg
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC02-98CH10886
- OSTI ID:
- 941619
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-81649-2008-CP; R&D Project: 15381; 401001060; TRN: US200825%%511
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ANS PSA 2008 Topical Meeting - Challenges to PSA During the Nuclear Renaissance; Knoxville, TN; 20080907 through 20080911
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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