Toward Cost-Effective Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulations: Implementation of a Generic Co-Simulation Interface in a Stability Study for Orthogonal Cutting

The high cost associated with hardware platforms for implementing Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) applications is often prohibitive for many research groups and companies. Therefore, there is an increasing demand to develop cost-effective solutions that can still deliver accurate and reliable results. In this paper, we showcase the practical application of our previously developed co-simulation interface as a cost-effective alternative to replace these expensive hardware setups. Our proposal is composed of a hardware part, consisting of a ZedBoard equipped with commercial ADC and DAC modules, and a software part comprising the developed co-simulation interface. The ZedBoard serves as the primary computation platform and acts as a communication medium with the physical world. On the other hand, the interface allows real-time communication between the ZedBoard and various simulation environments and hardware components via Ethernet. To demonstrate this, we apply the interface in a study of chatter in industrial machining processes. Here, we connect the ZedBoard with Simulink via the interface, while the ADC and DAC modules are wired to the acquisition card of a real-time computing platform. As result, we demonstrate that our co-simulation interface offers an accessible and affordable solution for high-performance real-time simulations.