Study on engine control software testing based on hardware-in-the-loop simulation platform

Electronic control technology of engine nowadays becomes increasingly widely used, and V-cycle development process has become the important development mode of the engine electronic control system. As engine control software functions become more complicated, software testing, which is a part of verification in the V-cycle development process, has been considered a particularly vital development approach. Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system is used for software testing because compared with other testing platforms, it not only gets closer to the real working environment of engine controller, but also can realize the limiting conditions of engine, which contribute to a significant enhancement of test efficiency and a reduction of development expenses. Based on the self-built HIL test platform, an automatic test procedure of an eight-cylinder unit-pump diesel engine control software was proposed with a full consideration of test adequacy and test coverage ratio. The test item extraction and distribution strategy, test case design, and its implementation using automatic test scripts were introduced in detail. Test results show that the extracted test items covered all the function points of the control software and met the test demand; meanwhile, the application of automatic testing could effectively reduce the workload of program testers and greatly improve the test efficiency. Finally, the advantages of HIL-based software testing and software problems that can be solved through this methodology were also briefly summarized.