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The MathWorks today announced that Haldex, the Swedish based global automotive sub-system supplier, has applied Simulink, Stateflow and Simulink Control Design to develop braking control algorithms for its EB+ articulated vehicle safety controllers.  The use of the MathWorks tools and consulting services cut development time by 50 percent. Furthermore the application of modelling reduced the need for expensive test vehicles and hazardous track testing.

Articulated vehicle rollovers cause hundreds of traffic accidents each year, but developing safety-critical systems to help prevent rollovers is costly and challenging. Legislative requirements change rapidly, and commercial pressures mean the time available to develop and incorporate complex new safety features for commercial vehicles continues to shrink.

"MathWorks tools enabled us to reduce our dependency on developing control strategies in target vehicles, thereby reducing the time, cost and resources necessary to complete the task," said Laurence Lane, senior engineer at Haldex.  "With our 'virtual vehicles,' and by evaluating control strategies in the safe environment of Simulink, we reduced the role of the actual vehicles to system validation."

Articulated vehicle stability was a new area for Haldex, so the control strategies had to be developed from the ground- up. The stability control algorithms for the braking system control software has to detect load transfer and reduce vehicle speed to maintain the vehicles lateral stability. Testing such safety systems is not only dangerous but also expensive and time consuming, since Haldex products are used on a wide range of vehicles.

"Creating accurate and robust models of articulated vehicles is a challenging area," said David Sampson, Principal Engineer at The MathWorks.  "I'm very pleased that the consulting team at The MathWorks was able to make a contribution to the project by providing expertise and resource in the areas of vehicle and tyre modelling.  We look forward to seeing what the next phase of developments brings."
Following the success of the project, MathWorks products are now core tools in the development of new-generation EBS, ABS and stability products at Haldex, including the second generation of the EB+ Stability system.