Reliability of Real-Time Engineering Software

随着他们参与智能结构、航空航天和核应用，土木工程师还必须关注他们开发的用于控制、感知和监测的软件的可靠性。例如，考虑主动结构控制软件所需的高可靠性和容错性。由于这些实时系统在没有人参与的情况下运行，错误的影响可能特别具有破坏性：控制系统故障可能会刺激结构，而不是消散振动。这项研究的总体目标是检查实时土木工程软件中可靠性问题的影响，并定义一种实用的方法，包括部署前验证和运行时支持，可用于确保可靠性。更具体地说，这项研究将集中在主动结构控制的软件可靠性上，并将利用静态验证和实时测试技术等概念来确保软件的正确性，以及容错和冗余，以在存在硬件和软件错误的情况下提供可靠的行为。这项研究的好处有望为实际的土木工程应用开发可靠的、容错的、实时的计算机软件。

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.