Function development and verification environment for active safety functions of heavy commercial vehicles

Introduction of active safety functions in the heavy vehicle industry to meet the legislations and continuous development of new functions is a major task considering performance, cost and time. In order to introduce these features in a short time period, with affordable costs including validation makes it necessary to find an alternative approach to existing practices of development process. Based on the advanced engineering studies on model based product development, within Volvo Group Trucks Technology, a proposal was to have a simulation environment capable of integrating the entire range of functional systems represented by physical models and motion controllers followed by implementing software in loop simulations for the verification of the motion control systems. The aim of this thesis was to generate a simulation environment to support function development of new active safety functions and verification of Electronic Braking System (EBS) functions by integrating existing in-house tools within Volvo Group Trucks Technology and the complied software code (EBS-7) from the supplier. Simulation environment was developed with a focus on modularity to cover diverse variant based product offering and supporting quick function development with the help of MATLAB/Simulink. Finally, the simulation environment was verified for its function, stability and accuracy by using simplified test cases and further validated by correlating the simulation results with real test measurements. The simulation results and correlation with the real truck test measurements indicate the ability of simulation environment to serve as a tool for the future function development of safety functions and verification of Electronic Braking System functions