Automatic Failure Modes and Effects Analysis of an Electronic Fuel Injection Model

Abstract

In the development of safety-critical systems, it is important to perform failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) to identify potential failures. However, traditional FMEA activities tend to be considered difficult and time-consuming tasks. To compensate for the difficulty of the FMEA task, various types of tools are used to increase the quality and the effectiveness of the FMEA reports. This paper explains an automatic FMEA tool that integrates the model-based design (MBD), FMEA, and simulated fault injection techniques in a single environment. The automatic FMEA tool has the following advantages compared to the existing FMEA analysis tool: First, the automatic FMEA tool automatically generates FMEA reports, unlike the traditional spreadsheet-based FMEA tools. Second, the automatic FMEA tool analyzes the causality between the failure modes and the failure effects by performing model-based fault injection simulation. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the automatic FMEA, we used the electronic fuel injection system (EFI) Simulink model. The results of the automatic FMEA were compared to those of the legacy FMEA.

Keywords

• failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA)
• model-based design
• automatic generation tool
• fault injection simulation