Nissan Accelerates Development and Testing of Engine Control Software

Nissan engineers are using Model-Based Design with MATLAB® and Simulink® to reduce development and verification times for engine control software.

- Hiroshi Miyagawa

By 2022, Nissan Motor Corporation plans to renew all core models and introduce 20 models to strengthen its product lineup centred Nissan Intelligent Mobility. Nissan engineers are using Model-Based Design with MATLAB® and Simulink® to reduce development and verification times for engine control software.

Nissan uses simulations with a plant model to evaluate all Software Components (SW-C) in the application layer written in Simulink. To account for a large number of engine variants in the company’s expanding product line, Nissan engineers have established a standardised workflow in which they use Simulink and Powertrain Blockset™ to develop engine model variants and perform Model-In-Loop (MIL) and Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) tests. “Using the Powertrain Blockset dynamic engine model as a starting point, we are able to create and refine plant model variants efficiently,” says Hiroshi Katoh, deputy general manager of the powertrain control engineering department at Nissan Motor Corporation. “We can use the same model for both MIL and HIL testing, greatly reducing the effort required and accelerating development,” he explains.

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