Important factors affecting fault detection coverage in probabilistic safety assessment of digital instrumentation and control systems

As digital instrumentation and control (I&C) systems are gradually introduced into nuclear power plants (NPPs), concerns about the I&C systems’ reliability and safety are growing. Fault detection coverage is one of the most critical factors in the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) of digital I&C systems. To correctly estimate the fault detection coverage, it is first necessary to identify important factors affecting it. From experimental results found in the literature and the authors’ experience in fault injection experiments on digital systems, four system-related factors and four fault-related factors are identified as important factors affecting the fault detection coverage. A fault injection experiment is performed to demonstrate the dependency of fault detection coverage on some of the identified important factors. The implications of the experimental results on the estimation of fault detection coverage for the PSA of digital I&C systems are also explained. The set of four system-related factors and four fault-related factors is expected to provide a framework for systematically comparing and analyzing various fault injection experiments and the resultant estimations on fault detection coverage of digital I&C systems in NPPs.