Systematic validation and evaluation of a safety-critical middleware for Integrated Modular Avionics

This work defines a development process for a safety-critical middleware, so-called SMW approach, to integrate it into the state-of-the-art IMA development process within an application development. The defined development process of the SMW approach is used to develop a High Lift System that can be demonstrated in the laboratory. For this purpose, different demonstration scenarios are defined and performed on Airbus A350 modules and industrial prototypes in the laboratory. The main work in this thesis is to use the experience gained during validation to evaluate the SMW approach compared to a conventional development process. According to the existing evaluation framework, an evaluation concept is defined with two main views. The first view, the so-called project view, considers all relevant criteria to evaluate the capabilities of the development approach concerning a project, e.g., which steps in the development process have been automated and thereby made easier. The second view, so-called qualification view, looks at the objectives from the guidelines DO-178C, DO-297, and ARP4754A and evaluates them according to how they can be meet more easily in the future. Thus, the SMW approach is evaluated against the defined evaluation framework, each of the evaluation criteria is weighted, and assessment scores are assigned on a scale of 0 (inefficient) to 10 (exceedingly efficient). Subsequently, the results are presented graphically and shown in percentages indicating what the SMW achieves in terms of efficiency. When applied to the AVATAR project, the evaluation showed that the SMW approach could achieve effort reduction compared to the conventional IMA development approach.

In the final stages of this work, a qualitative evaluation based on the safety objectives was performed, highlighting and discussing the significant impacts of the SMW on the safety analysis process.