Property-Oriented Testing based on Simulated Annealing

Property-oriented testing uses the specification of a property to drive the testing process. The aim is to validate a program with respect to a target property, that is, to exercise the program and observe whether the property is violated or not. We define a test strategy for safety properties in cyclic control systems. It consists of the stepwise construction of test scenarios. Each step explores possible continuation of the dangerous scenarios found at the previous step, using heuristic search techniques. The feasibility of the strategy i s illustrated on a steam boiler case study, the target property being the “non explosion” of the boiler in presence of faults in the physical devices. As a first investigation, the strategy is instantiated with one heuristic search technique, simulated annealing, whose efficiency is analyzed in comparison with random sampling. The experimental results allow us to propose a revised version of the basic simulated annealing algorithm. Using the revised algorithm, the proposed strategy applied to the steam boiler is promising.