Reliability of Real-Time Engineering Software

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With their involvement in intelligent structures, and aerospace and nuclear applications, civil engineers must also be concerned about the reliability of the software they develop to control, sense, and monitor. Consider for example the high dependability and fault tolerance required of software for active structural control. Because these real-time systems operate without a human in the loop, the impact of errors can be particularly devastating: control system failure could excite the structure rather than dissipate vibration. The overall goals of this research are to examine the impact of reliability issues in real- time, civil engineering software, and to define a practical methodology, consisting of both predeployment validation and run- time support, that can be used to ensure reliability. More specifically, the study will focus on software reliability of active structural control, and will draw on notions such as static verification and real-time testing techniques to ensure software correctness, as well as fault tolerance and redundancy to provide dependable behavior in the presence of hardware and software errors. The benefits of this study are expected to enable the development of reliable, fault-tolerant, real-time computer software for practical civil engineering applications.