Incorporating S-shaped testing-effort functions into NHPP software reliability model with imperfect debugging

Testing-effort（TE） and imperfect debugging（ID） in the reliability modeling process may further improve the fitting and prediction results of software reliability growth models（SRGMs）. For describing the S-shaped varying trend of TE increasing rate more accurately, first, two S-shaped testing-effort functions（TEFs）, i.e.,delayed S-shaped TEF（DS-TEF） and inflected S-shaped TEF（IS-TEF）, are proposed. Then these two TEFs are incorporated into various types（exponential-type, delayed S-shaped and inflected S-shaped） of non-homogeneous Poisson process（NHPP）SRGMs with two forms of ID respectively for obtaining a series of new NHPP SRGMs which consider S-shaped TEFs as well as ID. Finally these new SRGMs and several comparison NHPP SRGMs are applied into four real failure data-sets respectively for investigating the fitting and prediction power of these new SRGMs.The experimental results show that：（i） the proposed IS-TEF is more suitable and flexible for describing the consumption of TE than the previous TEFs;（ii） incorporating TEFs into the inflected S-shaped NHPP SRGM may be more effective and appropriate compared with the exponential-type and the delayed S-shaped NHPP SRGMs;（iii） the inflected S-shaped NHPP SRGM considering both IS-TEF and ID yields the most accurate fitting and prediction results than the other comparison NHPP SRGMs.

Model-based robustness testing for avionics-embedded software

Robustness testing for safety-critical embedded software is still a challenge in its nascent stages. In this paper, we propose a practical methodology and implement an environment by employing model-based robustness testing for embedded software systems. It is a system-level black-box testing approach in which the fault behaviors of embedded software is triggered with the aid of modelbased fault injection by the support of an executable model-driven hardware-in-loop （HIL） testing environment. The prototype implementation of the robustness testing environment based on the proposed approach is experimentally discussed and illustrated by industrial case studies based on several avionics-embedded software systems. The results show that our proposed and implemented robustness testing method and environment are effective to find more bugs, and reduce burdens of testing engineers to enhance efficiency of testing tasks, especially for testing complex embedded systems.

Acceptance sampling plan of accelerated life testing for lognormal distribution under time-censoring

Abstract Lognormal distribution is commonly used in engineering. It is also a life distribution of important research values. For long-life products follow this distribution, it is necessary to apply accelerated testing techniques to product demonstration. This paper describes the development of accelerated life testing sampling plans （ALSPs） for lognormal distribution under time-censoring conditions. ALSPs take both producer and consumer risks into account, and they can be designed to work whether acceleration factor （AF） is known or unknown. When AF is known, lift testing is assumed to be conducted under accelerated conditions with time-censoring. The producer and con- sumer risks are satisfied, and the size of test sample and the size of acceptance number arc opti- mized. Then sensitivity analyses are conducted. When AF is unknown, two or more predetermined levels of accelerated stress are used. The sample sizes and sample proportion allo- cated to each stress level are optimized. The acceptance constant that satisfies producer and consumer risk is obtdned by minimizing the generalized asymptotic variance of the test statistics. Finally, the properties of the two ALSPs （one for known-AF conditions and one for unknown AF conditions） are investigated to show that the proposed method is corrcct and usablc through numerical examples.