Cable dynamics and fatigue analysis for digital mock-up in vehicle industry

Numerical simulation has become an important aspect of modern industrial production processes. Very early in the process chain - even before first prototypes are built - simulation is used for digital mock-up in order to discover potential problems and to improve certain components and their assembling. In our work, we focus on the simulation of highly flexible components like cables and hoses, which is a challenging task in vehicle industry. Nowadays, complex harnesses with kilometers of cables can be found in every vehicle and the amount even increases for electric drivelines and hybrid cars. Especially for cables of safety-relevant equipment, high loads and contacts with high friction should be avoided, already during the assembling but also later in regular usage. We present the essential steps of a dynamic cable simulation and a subsequent comparative load data analysis. The latter allows to efficiently compare many different cable configurations in order to identify the best one in the sense of damage.