Development of a Functional Safety Software Layer for the Control of an Electric In-Wheel Motor Based Powertrain

This paper describes the development of a software layer which monitors the functional behavior of an electric in-wheel motor controller. Due to the large amount of software, sensors and actuators present in such a powertrain system, the risk of E/E failures that cause hazardous situations needs to be considered. To this end, a software safety layer is developed which detects and controls safety goal violations during runtime. This is realized using a model-based design methodology in accordance with ISO 26262 part 6: Product Development on the Software Level. This paper describes the steps taken in the design and implementation of this functional safety monitoring layer, from requirements modelling in SysML to a MATLAB Simulink model suitable for production code generation.