Verification, Validation, and Testing of Engineered Systems

Systems' Verification Validation and Testing (VVT) are carried outthroughout systems' lifetimes. Notably, quality-costexpended on performing VVT activities and correcting system defectsconsumes about half of the overall engineering cost.Verification, Validation and Testing of EngineeredSystems provides a comprehensive compendium of VVTactivities and corresponding VVT methods for implementationthroughout the entire lifecycle of an engineered system. Inaddition, the book strives to alleviate the fundamental testingconundrum, namely: What should be tested? How should one test? Whenshould one test? And, when should one stop testing? In other words,how should one select a VVT strategy and how it be optimized?
The book is organized in three parts: The first part providesintroductory material about systems and VVT concepts. This partpresents a comprehensive explanation of the role of VVT in theprocess of engineered systems (Chapter-1). The second partdescribes 40 systems' development VVT activities (Chapter-2) and 27systems' post-development activities (Chapter-3). Corresponding tothese activities, this part also describes 17 non-testing systems'VVT methods (Chapter-4) and 33 testing systems' methods(Chapter-5). The third part of the book describes ways to modelsystems' quality cost, time and risk (Chapter-6), as well asways to acquire quality data and optimize the VVT strategy in theface of funding, time and other resource limitations as well asdifferent business objectives (Chapter-7). Finally, this partdescribes the methodology used to validate the quality model alongwith a case study describing a system's quality improvements(Chapter-8).
Fundamentally, this book is written with two categories ofaudience in mind. The first category is composed of VVTpractitioners, including Systems, Test, Production and Maintenanceengineers as well as first and second line managers. The secondcategory is composed of students and faculties of Systems,Electrical, Aerospace, Mechanical and Industrial Engineeringschools. This book may be fully covered in two to three graduatelevel semesters; although parts of the book may be covered in onesemester. University instructors will most likely use the book toprovide engineering students with knowledge about VVT, as well asto give students an introduction to formal modeling andoptimization of VVT strategy.