Formal Verification of PLC Programs Using the B Method

Barbosa, Haniel; Déharbe, David

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-30885-7_30

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Nevertheless, formal methods and especially formal verification and code generation are not widely used in industry [17,21]. Having mentioned the slow adaption of model-driven engineering, we identify that both tool support and the integration in existing industry processes are two main obstacles for the establishment of formal methods in the PLC domain.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 98%

Towards establishing formal verification and inductive code synthesis in the PLC domain

Weis

Marks

Maschler

et al. 2021

2021 IEEE 19th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN)

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Nowadays, formal methods are used in various areas for the verification of programs or for code generation from models in order to increase the quality of software and to reduce costs. However, there are still fields in which formal methods haven't been widely adopted, despite the large set of possible benefits offered. This is the case for the area of programmable logic controllers (PLC). This article aims to evaluate the potential of formal methods in the context of PLC development. For this purpose, the general concepts of formal methods are first introduced and then transferred to the PLC area, resulting in an engineering-oriented description of the technology that is based on common concepts from PLC development. Based on this description, PLC professionals with varying degrees of experience were interviewed for their perspective on the topic and to identify possible use cases within the PLC domain. The survey results indicate the technology's high potential in the PLC area, either as a tool to directly support the developer or as a key element within a model-based systems engineering toolchain. The evaluation of the survey results is performed with the aid of a demo application that communicates with the Totally Integrated Automation Portal from Siemens and generates programs via Fastsynth, a modelbased open source code generator. Benchmarks based on an industry-related PLC project show satisfactory synthesis times and a successful integration into the workflow of a PLC developer.

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Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 98%

Towards establishing formal verification and inductive code synthesis in the PLC domain

Weis

Marks

Maschler

et al. 2021

2021 IEEE 19th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN)

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“…In their work [5], Barbosa et al support a wide range of IEC61131-3 standard PLC programming languages (ST, SFC, FBD, and LD) coded in PLCOpen 5 XML format by implementing adapters that transform program organization units to the B-method's [72] specification format. They used the ProB model checker [1] to verify safety and liveness properties of the door subsystem of trains in a railway project in about 10 min.…”

Section: Other Approaches That Use Model Checkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

An overview of model checking practices on verification of PLC software

et al. 2014

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Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) are heavily used in industrial control systems, because of their high capacity of simultaneous input/output processing capabilities. Characteristically, PLC systems are used in mission critical systems, and PLC software needs to conform real-time constraints in order to work properly. Since PLC programming requires mastering low-level instructions or assembly like languages, an important step in PLC software production is modelling using a formal approach like Petri nets or automata. Afterward, PLC software is produced semiautomatically from the model and refined iteratively. Model checking, on the other hand, is a well-known software verification approach, where typically a set of timed properties are verified by exploring the transition system produced from the software model at hand. Naturally, model checking is applied in a variety of ways to verify the correctness of PLC-based software. In this paper, we provide a broad view about the difficulties that are encountered during the model checking process applied at the verification phase of PLC software production. We classify the approaches from two different perCommunicated by Prof. Einar Broch Johnsen and Luigia Petre. spectives: first, the model checking approach/tool used in the verification process, and second, the software model/source code and its transformation to model checker's specification language. In a nutshell, we have mainly examined SPIN, SMV, and UPPAAL-based model checking activities and model construction using Instruction Lists (and alike), Function Block Diagrams, and Petri nets/automata-based model construction activities. As a result of our studies, we provide a comparison among the studies in the literature regarding various aspects like their application areas, performance considerations, and model checking processes. Our survey can be used to provide guidance for the scholars and practitioners planning to integrate model checking to PLC-based software verification activities.

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“…To name but a few, in [1] the authors translate the PLC program of an interlocking railway system, written in the FBD (Function Block Diagrams) language, into the input format language of NuSMV to verify their specification written as CTL (Computation Tree Logic) properties. In [2], the PLC program that controls the doors' opening and closing in the trains from the Metro in Brasília, Brazil, was formally verified. In this case, a B model [3] is created automatically * borja.fernandez.adiego@cern.ch from the PLC code.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When applying model checking to PLC programs, three main challenges are faced: (1) building the mathematical model of the program, (2) formalizing the requirements to be checked and (3) the state-space explosion, i.e. the number of possible input combinations and execution traces is too big to be exhaustively explored.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying Model Checking to Highly-Configurable Safety Critical Software: The SPS-PPS PLC Program

Adiego¹,

Lopez-Miguel²,

Tournier³

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems

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An important aspect of many particle accelerators is the constant evolution and frequent configuration changes that are needed to perform the experiments they are designed for.This often leads to the design of configurable software that can absorb these changes and perform the required control and protection actions. This design strategy minimizes the engineering and maintenance costs, but it makes the software verification activities more challenging since safety properties must be guaranteed for any of the possible configurations.Software model checking is a popular automated verification technique in many industries. This verification method explores all possible combinations of the system model to guarantee its compliance with certain properties or specification. This is a very appropriate technique for highly configurable software, since there is usually an enormous amount of combinations to be checked.This paper presents how PLCverif, a CERN model checking platform, has been applied to a highly configurable Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) program, the SPS Personnel Protection System (PPS). The benefits and challenges of this verification approach are also discussed.

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Formal Verification of PLC Programs Using the B Method

Cited by 11 publications

References 16 publications

Towards establishing formal verification and inductive code synthesis in the PLC domain

Towards establishing formal verification and inductive code synthesis in the PLC domain

An overview of model checking practices on verification of PLC software

Applying Model Checking to Highly-Configurable Safety Critical Software: The SPS-PPS PLC Program

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