Automated management and verification of electrical and/or software models in Propulsion and Control subsystem
Bombardier Transportation (BT) in Västerås, Sweden, aims at improving the process of testing for their projects as well as products.
Today’s challenge for BT is that a train is unique for a given customer, but it is based on a product. Thus, each delivery becomes a variant or configuration of the product, and each delivery can consist of several variants/configurations. Therefore, the amount of configuration possibilities can be vast. On top of that there are always customer unique add-on functions. Testing all those configurations consume time and delay the time to market and slow down the time for making potential updates. It doesn’t help the fact that all those configurations have to be re-tested as part of the regression testing for each product release. With XIVT, Bombardier Transportation aims at improving variant testing activity potentially with an automated continuous one.
The Bombardier Train Control and Management System (TCMS) and Propulsion and Controls (PPC) are both technically advanced and crucial to the functionality of the train. TCMS is considered as the center of the distributed system that controls the flow of information both on the train between the different subsystems like converters, doors, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning and between the train and ground. TCMS is a distributed system, which means that the communication links from and to the vehicle computer system are connected to different units distributed over the train. The distributed units can, for example, be assembled in boxes under the floor, under the driver’s desk or in closets in the vehicle. PPC handles the control of the entire propulsion system, including both control software as well as the electrical functions, for instance converters. PPC has interfaces to TCMS.
BT develops, manufactures and sells rail and rail systems for regional trains, high-speed trains and subway trains. Mounting of converters takes place in Västerås and later in series production, they can be built in China or India to relieve the production in Västerås. Automated testing of both regular and safety-critical software is performed within a simulated environment from a “driver’s point of view” and the envision is to add more automated integration and unit level tests to the CI. It is important to automatically provide suitable input data to test the the system to a sufficiently high degree. This also involves modelling the surrounding hardware and electrical environment of the system and using it to provoke the system to achieve suitable testing coverage.In specific, automated configuration tests are of interest. Improving variant testing has the potential to shorten lead time and improve quality.
The SW has a close dependency on HW so it is crucial to handle the HW interface and HW system together with the SW. The modelling and variant handling is relevant both for HW as well as for SW. There is a potential for SW quality increase when HW model is considered. Modelling and testing SW together with HW model also has a huge potential cost saving when it is compared to the costly testing that would be done on a train (target).
The use case relates well to the main goals of XIVT project, in that the PPC constitutes of large, complex systems in many different configurations. We expect the work on this use case to substantially increase the test efficiency at Bombardier as well as shorten the time spent on testing, and provide continuous feedback in terms of overall test quality and fault detection.