Physics-based modeling and simulation for motional cable harness design

The design work of motional cable in products is vital due to the difficulty in estimating the potential issues in current researches. In this paper, a physics-based modeling and simulation method for the motional cable harness design is presented. The model, based on continuum mechanics, is established by analyzing the force of microelement in equilibrium. During the analysis procedure, three coordinate systems: inertial, Frenet and main-axis coordinate systems are used. By variable substitution and dimensionless processing, the equation set is discretized by differential quadrature method and subsequently becomes an overdetermined nonlinear equation set with boundary conditions solved by Levenberg-Marquardt method. With the profile of motional cable harness obtained from the integral of arithmetic solution, a motion simulation system based on “path” and “profile” as well as the experimental equipments is built. Using the same parameters as input for the simulation and the real cable harness correspondingly, the issue in designing, such as collision, can be easily found by the simulation system. This research obtains a better result which has no potential collisions by redesign, and the proposed method can be used as an accurate and efficient way in motional cable harness design work.