Finite element analysis of mechanical behavior of electrical wire harnesses: High fidelity and reduced-order models

摘要

High-fidelity and reduced-order finite element (FE) models are introduced to simulate and characterize the bending behavior of flexible electrical wire harnesses undergoing large deflections. A composite wire harness consists of a bundle of wires, put together using layers of tape and/or a protective tube, which could be subdivided into smaller branches. In this work, elastoplastic constitutive models are adopted for wire harness components (wires, tape, and tube) and calibrated by matching their simulated and experimental force-displacement responses. Customized three-point bending tests are carried out on composite wire bundles (CWBs) and resulting data are utilized to calibrate friction coefficients between different components, as well as cohesive contact and damage parameters along taped surfaces in the high-fidelity FE model. After the validation of this model, we show that it can be used as a reliable surrogate to laborious mechanical testing for characterizing the bending response of CWBs. Resulting effective properties are then incorporated in a reduced-order FE model relying on beam elements, which can achieve a similar level of accuracy while reducing the computational cost > 99.5%. Both FE models are also employed to study the behavior of branching wire harnesses, showing that a viscoelastic material model is needed to properly characterize the stiffness of the branch break-out joint.