The Development of A Real-Time Hardware-in-the-Loop Test Bench for Hybrid Electric Vehicles Based on Multi-Thread Technology

The hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform for hybrid electric vehicle in this paper features the real-time characteristic and flexibility with a simple architecture which consist of a PC to display the simulation result and calculate the model, a simulation board (HIL-ECU) to generate the analogue signals and measure the Hybrid Control Unit (HCU) output, and a USB-CAN card to implement CAN communication. The RT-HIL adopts three methods to guarantee the real-time ability: 1) utilizing the multi-thread technology based on windows operating system with high-resolution timing function to proceed the model calculation; 2) adopting high speed MCU as key component of the simulation ECU; 3) using the high speed CAN as the communication method. The multi-thread technology is a key to realize the real-time simulation by create three independent threads to handle the model calculation, the monitor-control interface and can communication in the PC without sacrificing the realtime characteristic. The HIL-ECU in this platform has a core MCU which is 32-bits single chip MC68376 form Freescale, which is a high-speed and versatile MCU with the ability to generate the analogue signals and PWM signals to replace the true sensors in practical vehicles. A hybrid vehicle model is built in the PC acting as the real engine and electric motor. The RT-HIL platform can realize the hardware-in-the-loop simulation which is a combination test the hardware and its control strategy and validate the auto-generated code to eliminate the software bugs. And it was successfully used in the ISG Diesel Hybrid development.