Schindler Elevator Moves from Physical Testing to Simulation

“With the HIL approach, we can now cover a lot more test cases, just overnight. This also changes the design paradigm from securing worst cases to optimizing the software for typical use.”

Key Outcomes

  • Modeling and simulation framework for system-centric analysis and verification
  • Considerably less hardware required for tests with much broader coverage
  • Software release tests run in one night instead of taking weeks
  • User interfaces customized to needs of different engineering groups using MATLAB

Elevator designs are increasingly unique and are assembled onsite in very diverse environments. The conservative elevator industry, however, still relies on costly and time-consuming physical testing. Software testing is a huge challenge because of the variability of the product and late integration with the mechanical system in the actual elevator shaft.

Schindler Elevator is now introducing a model-based validation workflow into its development process. The EDEn (Elevator Dynamics Environment) is a set of tools developed in MATLAB®, Simulink®, and Simscape™ to perform offline simulations using web-based applications as well as hardware-in-the-loop tests. With EDEn, software release testing is shortened from three or four weeks to one overnight run, greatly reducing cost and risk while enabling much broader test coverage.