DASC 2023: Toolchain for DO-178C Software Development

23 Oktober 2023

A research on development and implementation of a model-based software development toolchain for developing a safety-critical battery controller for the project ELAPSED was presented at DASC 2023 conference in Barcelona. This work is a part of project ELAPSED funded by dtec.bw and is being done at the Institute of Aeronautical Engineering. This research aims to provide a requirements-based software development toolchain that contains a set of commercial tools and a process-oriented build tool developed in-house. The research presents a complete software development process to develop safety-critical battery controller software for a Multilevel Battery Management System of an electric glider along DO-178C/DO-331 standards. The paper includes the system and software requirements validation and traceability concept as required by the standards. The testing aspects, such as static analysis, Processor-in-the-Loop (PIL), and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulations, are also covered, which increases confidence in the applicability of the software. The software development process mentioned in this paper also touches on a few aspects of agile development, such as continuous integration and version management.