Checking Computations of Formal Method Tools - A Secondary Toolchain for ProB

We present the implementation of pyB, a predicate - and expression - checker for the B language. The tool is to be used for a secondary tool chain for data validation and data generation, with ProB being used in the primary tool chain. Indeed, pyB is an independent cleanroom-implementation which is used to double-check solutions generated by ProB, an animator and model-checker for B specifications. One of the major goals is to use ProB together with pyB to generate reliable outputs for high-integrity safety critical applications. Although pyB is still work in progress, the ProB/pyB toolchain has already been successfully tested on various industrial B machines and data validation tasks.Comment: In Proceedings F-IDE 2014, arXiv:1404.578

Who watches the watchers: Validating the ProB Validation Tool

Over the years, ProB has moved from a tool that complemented proving, to a development environment that is now sometimes used instead of proving for applications, such as exhaustive model checking or data validation. This has led to much more stringent requirements on the integrity of ProB. In this paper we present a summary of our validation efforts for ProB, in particular within the context of the norm EN 50128 and safety critical applications in the railway domain.Comment: In Proceedings F-IDE 2014, arXiv:1404.578

NASA schedules second in new Pioneer series

Description of Pioneer B solar prob

Symbolic Reachability Analysis of B through ProB and LTSmin

We present a symbolic reachability analysis approach for B that can provide a significant speedup over traditional explicit state model checking. The symbolic analysis is implemented by linking ProB to LTSmin, a high-performance language independent model checker. The link is achieved via LTSmin's PINS interface, allowing ProB to benefit from LTSmin's analysis algorithms, while only writing a few hundred lines of glue-code, along with a bridge between ProB and C using ZeroMQ. ProB supports model checking of several formal specification languages such as B, Event-B, Z and TLA. Our experiments are based on a wide variety of B-Method and Event-B models to demonstrate the efficiency of the new link. Among the tested categories are state space generation and deadlock detection; but action detection and invariant checking are also feasible in principle. In many cases we observe speedups of several orders of magnitude. We also compare the results with other approaches for improving model checking, such as partial order reduction or symmetry reduction. We thus provide a new scalable, symbolic analysis algorithm for the B-Method and Event-B, along with a platform to integrate other model checking improvements via LTSmin in the future

Solar plasma experiment

Solar plasma experiment by Mariner IV space prob

Distribution of Avalanche Sizes in the Hysteretic Response of Random Field Ising Model on a Bethe Lattice at Zero Temperature

We consider the zero-temperature single-spin-flip dynamics of the random-field Ising model on a Bethe lattice in the presence of an external field h. We derive the exact self-consistent equations to determine the distribution Prob(s) of avalanche sizes s, as the external field increases from large negative to positive values. We solve these equations explicitly for a rectangular distribution of the random fields for a linear chain and the Bethe lattice of coordination number z=3, and show that in these cases, Prob(s) decreases exponentially with s for large s for all h on the hysteresis loop. We found that for z >3 and for small disorder, the magnetization shows a first order discontinuity for several continuous and unimodel distributions of random fields. The avalanche distribution Prob(s) varies as s^{-3/2} for large s near the discontinuity.Comment: 30 pages, 10 eps figure

Exploration of the moon and planets

Unmanned interplanetary flight - engineering problems of mariner ii space prob