Safety analysis for integrated modular avionics based on blueprints

Abstract

The Integrated Modular Avionics System (IMA) has been a core technology for the new generation of aircrafts in recent years. It consists of a set of reusable and interoperable common functional modules. However, the highly coupled relationship of resources makes it difficult to identify and control dangers. As an effective and efficient way, the blueprints are used to describe and manage the IMA system. Owing to the system management functions provided by the blueprints, we can accurately determine the system resources configuration status, which is very crucial for safety analysis. In this paper, we explore the possibilities to conduct safety analysis based on blueprints. A safety analysis method based on blueprints is proposed, which applies mathematical logic to describe the logical relationship between targets and resources provided by the blueprints and uses semi-tensor product of matrix theory to simplify the logical expressions. Based on the mathematical model, we can conduct the fail safety analysis and identify resources failures that may undermine the IMA system safety.