ABSTRACT
Fault Injection (FI) is a technique extensively used in several domains, such as space, but sporadically used in the railways. In this chapter, authors present a fault-injection tool able to complement the traditional verification and validation procedures, to validate the safety of ProSigma, a Safety Integrity Level safety-critical system for railway signaling, implementing a Triple Modular Redundancy architecture. FI consists of the deliberate insertion of faults (i.e., realistic perturbations) in computer systems components in order to evaluate the dependability and safety properties of systems or to validate specific fault handling mechanisms. Fault injection has been used extensively in research and also already recommended by several standards, such as space and automotive industry standards, in addition to Information and Communication Technology industry in general. Safety-critical systems also required, over time, the creation of a field of study particularly aimed at focusing on safety-related issues: safety engineering.
