Abstract: A failure propagation characteristics-based failure model and such a model-based injection method of failures resulting from inaccessible location fault are studied to deal with the incapability of effective injection of such failures. This is achieved by a detailed analysis on the major factors affecting the effectiveness of failure injection in light of failure propagation characteristics, such as fault and condition, fault and fault. The study demonstrates that the failure propagation characteristics-based failure injection method can effectively deal with the issue of injection incapability of failures resulting from inaccessible locations while considerably reducing the fault injection cost. The study is of theoretical interest and may find wide engineering applications.

Key words: testability, verification test, fault injection, inaccessible location, propagation characteristic, Bayesian networks, certainty propagation algorithm