Managing design changes using safety-guided design for a safety critical automotive system

Abstract

The use of software to control automotive safety critical functions, such as throttle, braking and steering has been increasing. The automotive industry has a need for safety analysis methods and design processes to ensure these systems function safely. Many current recommendations still focus on traditional methods, which worked well for electro-mechanical designs but are not adequate for software intensive complex systems. System Theoretic Accident Model and Process (STAMP) and the associated System Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) method have been found to identify hazards for complex systems and can be effective earlier in the design process than current automotive techniques. The design of a complex safety-critical system will require many decisions that can potentially impact the system's safety. A safety analysis should be performed on the new design to understand any potential safety issues. Methods that can help identify where and how the change impacts the analysis would be a useful tool for designers and managers. This could reduce the amount of time needed to evaluate changes and to ensure the safety goals of the system are met. This thesis demonstrates managing design changes for the safetyƯ-guided design of an automotive safetyƯ-critical shift-by-wire system. The current safety related analysis methods and standards common to the automotive industry and the system engineering methods and research in the use of requirements traceability for impact analysis in engineering change management was reviewed. A procedure was proposed to identify the impact of design changes to the safety analysis performed with STPA. Suggested guidelines were proposed to identify the impact of the change on the safety analysis performed with STPA. It was shown how the impact of the design changes were incorporated into the STPA results to ensure safety constraints are managed with respect to these changes to maintain the safety controls of the system throughout the design process. Finally the feasibility of the procedure was demonstrated through the integration of the procedure with requirements traceability based on system engineering practices