Standard Compliant Requirements-Based Development of a Multilevel Battery Controller for Aerospace Applications

A novel electric propulsion system is being developed for an electrically powered glider at the Universität der Bundeswehr München. For this purpose, an innovative multilevel battery management system will be used to manage the battery load. This system will include a battery controller consisting of two parts: a main controller and several cell controllers. This research aims to provide a requirements-based software development toolchain that contains a set of commercial tools and a process-oriented build tool developed in-house. The research presents a complete software development process to develop safety-critical battery controller software for a Multilevel Battery Management System of an electric glider along DO-178C/DO-331 standards. The paper includes the system and software requirements validation and traceability concept as required by the standards. The testing aspects, such as static analysis, Processor-in-the-Loop (PIL), and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulations, are also covered, which increases confidence in the applicability of the software. The software development process mentioned in this paper also touches on a few aspects of agile development, such as continuous integration and version management.