ABSTRACT
With each new generation of aircraft, the requirements for digital avionics systems become increasingly complex, and their development and validation consumes an ever-increasing percentage of the total development cost of an aircraft. The introduction of life-critical avionics, where failure of the computer hardware or software can lead to loss of life, brings new challenges to avionics validation. The FAA recommends that catastrophic failures of the aircraft be “so unlikely that they are not anticipated to occur during the entire operational life of all airplanes of one type” and suggests probabilities of failure on the order of per flight hour [FAA, 1988].
