Integrated simulations of vehicle dynamics and control tasks execution by Modelica

The development of real time control systems not only requires the design of control strategy, but also the search for tradeoffs between control specifications, supervision logics, tasks scheduling and plant dynamics or constraints. This is particularly true for automotive applications where mechanics and electronics are strongly tightened together. In this paper we present a modeling approach for the integrated simulations of both vehicle dynamics and functional behavior of the control systems. By exploiting Modelica features, it is ongoing the development of a library of reusable models that will allow to build and mimic the dynamic behavior of vehicles in any propulsive configuration with particular attention to the hybrid ones. Besides the physical components models a multi tasking Electronic Control Unit (ECU) object oriented model, based on IEC 1131 standard, is also proposed to analyze pseudo parallel computing effect on control efficiency.