Supporting multidisciplinary vehicle analysis using a vehicle reference architecture model in SysML

Abstract

To develop competitive vehicles with ever increasing complexity, automotive designers need to improve their ability to explore a broad range of system architectures efficiently and effectively. Whereas traditional vehicle systems are based on internal combustion (IC) engines, today's environmentally conscious vehicle manufacturers must consider alternatives to the IC engineonly systems such as hybrid or electric systems. To design a good vehicle, it is necessary to analyze each of these system architectures from a variety of perspectives including performance, fuel economy, or even thermal behavior. Creating all the necessary analysis models for all possible system architectures manually is very time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone. To overcome such challenges, a novel approach has been developed for partly automatically generating subsystem model templates to support the integration of analysis models in a consistent and convenient fashion. The approach starts from a Vehicle Reference Architecture (VRA) model defined in the Systems Modeling Language (OMG SysMLTM). After specialization of this VRA into a specific vehicle program model, this SysML model is automatically transformed into Modelica and Simulink templates for the corresponding analysis models. These templates embody interfaces that fit into a system-level integrated model so that individual subsystem experts can focus on modeling the physical or controls behavior of their particular subsystem without having to worry about subsequent integration issues. The subsystem template models guarantee consistency in the integration phase. The entire approach introduced in this paper is called the Vehicle Architecture Modeling Framework (VAMF), which includes the SysML VRA model, the corresponding analysis templates, and the transformation tools developed to support the approach. Throughout this paper, a specific (realistic but sanitized) vehicle program and a full pedal acceleration analysis test scenario are used as demonstration examples. © 2013 The authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.