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Towards the Automated Verification of Weibull Distributions for System Failure Rates

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9933))

Abstract

Weibull distributions can be used to accurately model failure behaviours of a wide range of critical systems such as on-orbit satellite subsystems. Markov chains have been used extensively to model reliability and performance of engineering systems or applications. However, the exponentially distributed sojourn time of Continuous-Time Markov Chains (CTMCs) can sometimes be unrealistic for satellite systems that exhibit Weibull failures. In this paper, we develop novel semi-Markov models that characterise failure behaviours, based on Weibull failure modes inferred from realistic data sources. We approximate and encode these new models with CTMCs and use the PRISM probabilistic model checker. The key benefit of this integration is that CTMC-based model checking tools allow us to automatically and efficiently verify reliability properties relevant to industrial critical systems.

Y. Lu—This research was partially supported by the EC project “ETCS Advanced Testing and Smart Train Positioning System” (FP7-TRANSPORT-314219). The author Yu Lu was funded by the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.seradata.com/.

  2. 2.

    Redundancy: the duplication of critical components or functions of a satellite subsystem.

  3. 3.

    Infant mortality: a subsystem fails early due to defects designed into or built into it.

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Lu, Y., Miller, A.A., Hoffmann, R., Johnson, C.W. (2016). Towards the Automated Verification of Weibull Distributions for System Failure Rates. In: ter Beek, M., Gnesi, S., Knapp, A. (eds) Critical Systems: Formal Methods and Automated Verification. AVoCS FMICS 2016 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9933. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45943-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45943-1_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45942-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45943-1

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