Home NI Partner Program Work with an NI Partner Battery Management System Test by OPAL RT Technologies

Battery Management System Test by OPAL-RT Technologies

Electric vehicle (EV) powertrain components and systems are rapidly evolving, and test teams must keep pace. For battery management system (BMS) test, engineers need to verify functionality with hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing by emulating battery cells and simulating sensors, I/O, and communication to other electronic control units (ECUs). To ensure that communication, safety functions, cell balancing, and fault monitoring algorithms are working properly, you need a highly adaptable, platform-based test approach that can:

 

  • Emulate cells on battery models
  • Conduct fault insertion and signal conditioning on BMSs
  • Implement ECU communications and sensor simulation on BMSs
  • Be used across the product development process to accelerate test development, expand test coverage, and efficiently manage data and systems

Solution Overview

  • Emulate 12 battery cells with a Comemso high-precision battery cell simulation (BCS) unit connected to the system through a PXI CAN interface module
  • Easily add more channels
  • Integrate battery models configured to simulate most battery types with different discharge characteristics
  • Connect to third-party equipment and execute real-time tests with NI VeriStand
  • Take advantage of integration expertise and custom engineering for extra protection, shunt emulation, breakout boxes, and the incorporation of other controls and systems

Solution Advantages

  • BMS leadership triumvirate with NI for hardware and VeriStand software, OPAL-RT for integration and models, and Comemso for battery emulation

  • NI real-time simulation system for developing and testing products and designs in a safe environment

  • Real-time simulation of battery models, high-fidelity power electronics and motors, and cooling or visual control units

“Testing a BMS in real time is not a very high technical challenge in terms of real-time simulation, but the safety and reliability, repeatability of tests, flexibility, and openness of the solution made the full difference for us.”

Julie Darrah, Senior Engineer, IAV Automotive Engineering

NI Partner Network

OPAL-RT is an NI Partner Network solutions partner specializing in hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing and power HIL/FPGA-based real-time simulation for automotive applications. This helps researchers prototype a wide variety of electric vehicle (EV) devices under test (DUTs) through open, flexible solutions that can adapt to changing research requirements for EV and BMS testing.

Learn More About This Solution