A distributed fault tolerant architecture for nuclear reactor and other critical process control applications

Author

Hecht, M. ; Agron, J. ; Hecht, H. ; Kim, K.H.

Author_Institution

SoHaR In., Beverly Hills, CA, USA

fYear

1991

fDate

25-27 June 1991

Firstpage

462

Lastpage

498

Abstract

A distributed fault tolerant system for process control that is based on an enhancement of the distributed recovery block (DRB) is described. Fault tolerance provisions in the system cover software faults by use of the DRB; hardware faults by means of replication and the DRB; system software faults by means of replication, loose coupling, periodic status messages, and a restart capability; and network faults by means of replication and diverse interconnection paths. Maintainability is enhanced through an automated restart capability and logging function resident on a system supervisor node. The system, called the extended distributed recovery block, or EDRB, has been implemented and integrated into a chemical processing system.<>

Keywords

computer architecture; distributed processing; fault tolerant computing; nuclear engineering computing; process computer control; real-time systems; automated restart capability; chemical processing system; critical process control; distributed fault tolerant architecture; distributed recovery block; diverse interconnection paths; extended distributed recovery block; logging function; loose coupling; nuclear reactor; periodic status messages; replication; restart capability; software faults; system supervisor node; Chemical processes; Control systems; Fault tolerance; Fault tolerant systems; Hardware; Network interfaces; Process control; Programmable control; Real time systems; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Fault-Tolerant Computing, 1991. FTCS-21. Digest of Papers., Twenty-First International Symposium

Conference_Location

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Print_ISBN

0-8186-2150-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FTCS.1991.146702

Filename

146702