Fault Tracking and Failure Effect Analysis in Complex Automotive Control Systems Based on a Generic Modeling Approach

This paper introduces a unified framework to perform fault tracking based on a technology-independent and consistent generic functional model capable of representing the entire automotive system while maintaining the ease of use. Based on the example of a complete light function model of a luxury class vehicle, it is illustrated how certain failures such as device break down or signal faults propagate through different subsystems and how these failures can be tracked. Another key feature of the proposed dependency analysis method is its valuable contribution to an efficient change management in the design phase. Given the functional model of the system, a tool can be used to indicate which development departments and resources are affected of possible changes and which are not.