Design of Necessary Safety Functions and Fault Detection in Electric Vehicle Control Unit based on Software-in-the-Loop

Compared to traditional vehicles, electric vehicles (EV) are designed with more complicated electrical systems which means EV has a higher failure rate. Therefore, vehicle control unit (VCU) is one of the most crucial and essential components of an electric vehicle. This paper focuses on designing a prototype of control algorithm for the electric powertrain with safety functions and fault injection technique which has been developed by using MATLAB Simulink (powertrain blockset and stateflow tool). The Simulink model includes a designed driver interface, dashboard interface that respectively provides various inputs and supports users to interact with the model before controlling their logic of operation and safety features as well as observes the feedback of vehicle model, and an electric vehicle from the MathWorks project that contains a battery management system (BMS) in battery pack, motor controller, motor and vehicle dynamics. Finally, control algorithms are conducted in safety operation and fault detection will demonstrate faults that are rationally detected from abnormal accelerator and brake pedal signals by Software-in-the-Loop test, which is beneficial before being implemented into the hardware.