Design-to-test approach for black-box testing of programmable controllers

Abstract

This paper focuses on a global consideration of design and testing phases of a safety-critical automation system with programmable controllers. A design-to-test approach is proposed to improve the testability of programmable controllers and reduce overhead during the testing phase, under the premise that the nominal behavior of a system is guaranteed to remain unchanged during normal execution. This approach is elaborated and illustrated on a medium scale case study throughout the paper, and then applied to a larger case study in order to illustrate its scalability.