Application of Functional Safety Standards to the Electrification of a Vehicle Powertrain

With the introduction of electronic control units to automotive vehicles, system complexity has increased. With this change in complexity, new standards have been created to ensure safety at the system level for these vehicles. Furthermore, vehicles have become increasingly complex with the push for electrification of automotive vehicles, which has resulted in the creation of hybrid electric and battery electric vehicles.

The goal of this thesis is to provide an example of a hazard and operability analysis as well as a hazard and risk analysis for a hybrid electric vehicle. Additionally, the safety standards developed do not align well with educational prototype vehicles because the standards are designed for corporations. The hybrid vehicle supervisory controller example within this thesis demonstrates how to define a system and then perform system-level analytical techniques to identify potential failures and associated requirements. Ultimately, through this analysis suggestions are made on how best to reduce system complexity and improve system safety of a student built prototype vehicle.