FPGA Based Real-Time Electric Power Assisted Steering Motor-Drive Simulator Designed for HiL Testing in the Automotive Industry

• Published in: 2017 IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC) pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: Ruba, Mircea, Nemes, Raul, Martis, Claudia
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.12.2017
• Subjects: Field programmable gate arrays; Hardware; Inverters; Pulse width modulation; Real-time systems; Rotors; Testing
• DOI: 10.1109/VPPC.2017.8331024

The paper is dedicated for presenting a concept of fast and low cost development of a testing environment for Hardware in the Loop (HiL) applications dedicated for electric power assisted steering (EPS) systems of electric vehicles (EVs). The focus is to create a tool that allows testing an electronic control unit (ECU) in realistic conditions without engaging the hardware of a real EPS motor-drive unit compound of the electronic inverter, the motor and their peripheral necessities. Instead, the entire hardware is replaces by a complex model that runs on a high speed, fixed time step processor, such as a field programmable gate array (FPGA). This is connected to the ECU, running on another FPGA via analog and digital I/Os, mirroring the connections required by the real hardware. This way, testing several control strategies from classical to fault tolerant ones can be performed in the same conditions as it would be tested on a real test-bench. Details about the implementation of the environment based on LabVIEW FPGA software and National Instruments FPGA boards are presented in the paper. The testing tool is experimentally validated with laboratory measurements.