Reliability analysis of propulsion motor control software based on SFTA and CCA

Abstract As a critical component of the propulsion motor controller, the reliability of control software is directly related to the safety performance of electric aircraft. To improve the accuracy of reliability analysis for propulsion motor control software, a method based on Software Fault Tree Analysis (SFTA) and Common Cause Analysis (CCA) is proposed. This approach aims to comprehensively identify potential faults in each module of the control software while also considering the possibility of multiple modules failing due to a shared fault source. It provides a key basis for further reliability design and optimization of the software. Taking the motor control software of a certain quadrotor electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft’s electric propulsion system as the research object, a hierarchical software architecture model and a fault tree analysis model were constructed. Through quantitative analysis, the probability of the top event “motor control failure” was calculated to be 2.668×10 −6 , which meets the reliability requirements of the motor control system, thereby verifying the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.