Meeting the challenges of evolving functional safety systems

With the evolution of safety systems from fail-safe to fail-operational systems and the rapid advancements in electrified drivetrains and transmissions, developers need to implement innovative methods for fault avoidance and fault detection, while also planning strategies for potential transitions to and from safe states.

TI’s portfolio of power management and analog signal chain products can provide a complete system solution to meet these challenges. Safety power management ICs, like the TPS653853-Q1, along with motor drivers, like the DRV3245Q-Q1 (AEC-Q100 Grade 1) and DRV3245E-Q1 (AEC-Q100 Grade 0), solve several system integration challenges in fail-operational, by-wire and high-temperature safety systems.

Some of these benefits include:

• Offering scalable, pin-to-pin and software-compatible AEC-Q100 Grade 1 (Ta = 125°C) and AEC-Q100 Grade 0 (Ta = 150°C) versions.
• Providing systematic capability of ASIL-D in single-stator or dual-stator motor systems.
• Reducing the cost impact of doubling the semiconductor content on the board with an architecture optimized for performance and bill of materials.
• Enabling integration of IC FIT rates into system-level FIT-rate calculations, including mission-profile tailoring for high-temperature safety applications.
• Providing FIT rates and failure mode effects and diagnostic analysis at the IC level.

Additionally, TI provides the assumptions of IC-level hardware metrics and support for adjusting the IC-level hardware metric for the developer’s specific system.

To get started with safety development for a motor system, consider pairing the DRV3245Q-Q1 evaluation module, which ships with a host of TI safety peripherals, with the Hercules™ TMS570LS12x LaunchPad™ Development Kit. Figure 3 below shows the DRV3245Q-Q1 evaluation module paired with the development kit.