An Approach for the Reliability Analysis of Automotive Control Systems

In this paper, we present an approach and a tool that automates and thereby accelerates the most timeconsuming phases of reliability engineering. In this approach, an operational function is computed automatically from a high-level system description by using of system components’ properties, fault types propagation rules and other auxiliary information. The tool allows arbitrary component types, any component couplings and failure types and covers thus mandatory features for a profound reliability analysis. It calculates the mean time to failure, the mean fault number and the components’ influence on the overall reliability as system reliability characteristics. This tool was tested by a major car manufacturer in an embedded electronic system of a car. The main advantage of the developed tool is that it simplifies reliability analysis of complex-structured systems using a novel method for system operational state description. Keywords-reliability analysis; automotive control system.