An Innovative HiL Test Environment with a Fully Integrated Brake System and Automated Brake Performance Evaluation

An innovative Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) test bench for brake systems and controller development is presented. It integrates a complete brake system into a HiL test bench, the so-called Brake System Integration HiL (BSI-HiL). A brake system is incorporated into a test bench with soft real-time and large-scale automation components - from the pedal to the wheel brakes. The soft real-time simulation environment enables an extensive development process from Model-in-the-Loop (MiL) over Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) and a digital twin of the HiL to the complete BSI-HiL application. It is primarily designed for the development of brake systems, ABS, ESC and ACC control logics and features for automated driving. The vehicle model and the test environment are created in MATLAB Simulink and simulated in soft real-time. Emphasis was placed on an easy and continuous development process. By creating a similar test environment for all development stages, controller development becomes straight forward. The evaluation environment enables fast performance analyses and comparisons between tests but also development stages Mil, SiL and HiL up to real vehicle tests. The simulation runs on a conventional PC or laptop, no dedicated real-time environment is needed. An EtherCAT connection is utilized for communication, as this allows high update speeds for large data exchange. The brake system of a C-segment car is used and mounted on a small form factor and transportable test bench. With the BSI-HiL’s modularity, various brake systems from different manufacturers can be realized. The components and the architecture in use allow for a cost-reduction compared to conventional brake HiL’s with similar performance.