Automotive Wiring Harness Verification Method

As the electrical functions and functional configurations of the entire vehicle become increasingly complex, the focus on verifying whether the wire harness design is reasonable and how to optimize the wire harness system to achieve an optimal design is gradually increasing. This blog is an in-depth explanation of the automotive wire harness design verification part.

The need for wire harness system design verification

The wire harness connects all the controllers, actuators, and sensors in the vehicle, and plays the role of power distribution and signal transmission in the whole vehicle. In analogy with the human body, the wire harness is equivalent to the blood vessels and nervous system of the vehicle. Therefore, whether the wire harness design is reasonable or not directly affects the safety of the electrical function of the vehicle and the reliability of the vehicle.

If the wire harness design is unreasonable, can not meet the requirements of the actual vehicle load, then there will be fuse life is too short, fuse wire abnormal melting, wire overload smoke, and even fire and other accidents. If the redundancy of wire harness design is too large, it is not conducive to the cost control of the whole vehicle, the quality of the whole vehicle, and fuel economy.

Wire harness design verification method

1. Software Simulation

The advantage is that it can be implemented in the forward design stage. The software simulation verifies whether the wiring harness assembly is reasonable, whether the vehicle wiring harness topology is suitable, whether the distribution principle design and electrical parts arrangement are reasonable, etc. However, the software simulation is simulated by the calculated parameters, and it cannot realize the test verification of real vehicle conditions and various working conditions of actual vehicle use.

2. Real vehicle testing

Generally, it is implemented when the electrical parts are C samples and the whole vehicle is in an OTS state. The real-vehicle test takes into account both the verification of wire harness arrangement and the verification of power distribution design, which can realize the evaluation of the reasonableness of the real-vehicle arrangement of the wire harness system, the verification of power distribution design, the verification of the current distribution at the hitch point and other design verification. However, real-vehicle testing requires the resources of the whole vehicle and is the highest in terms of investment. In the real vehicle test, overload or abuse of electrical functions will occur, which will also damage the vehicle, and the vehicle will generally be scrapped after the test, so the reuse of resources is not high.

3. Bench testing

Generally, it is implemented at the stage of C prototype of electrical parts, when the function of electrical parts is perfect, the state is close to the mass production prototype, the performance is more stable, and the test results are highly reliable. On the electrical bench, the bench simulates the use of electrical appliances in real vehicles to test the actual parts, which has the advantages of high reliability of test results and close to the real vehicle conditions, but it is impossible to complete the inspection of the wiring harness layout on the bench, and some of the real vehicle conditions cannot be simulated (for example, the current distribution at the hitch point of the whole vehicle).

The conclusion

In general, rational wiring harness design and harness design optimization are becoming more and more important concerns for OEMs and harness manufacturers. We are a wire harness supplier, please feel free to contact us if you need them.