Project 1

AIM:

To Route the Wiring harness on Given Engine and Prepare flatten view drawing in CATIA V5. Application of all Packaging rules.

INTRODUCTION:

A wire harness, also commonly referred to as a wiring harness, is an exterior sheath used to cover some types of electronic wires. Generally, wiring harnesses are made of thermoplastic or thermoset materials that can help protect the cables from the environment.

An engine wiring harness is constricted wires, cables, terminals, and connectors controlling a vehicle’s electrical system. It relays electrical power and control information to components such as batteries, alternators, fuel injectors, fuses, audio systems, blower motors, fuel injectors, and computers. Wire harness companies customize it for every location, application, and design it interconnects. Also known as a cable harness, it is more than just a collection of multiple wires put together.

It manages the key functions around the engine including engine controller, oil controller gate, transmission plug housing, air pipe sensors, pressure sensors, and water temperature sensors.

An engine wiring harness is how each part of your vehicle gets electricity. It is crucial to help the vehicle run and it’s usually made of a heat-resistant rubber to handle the high and low temperatures that vehicles often experience. The vehicle needs more than the engine, and it requires a lot of electricity for certain things to function, like the radio or lights. Beyond that, battery, starter, and even alternator run on power, which is provided by the engine. Without an engine wiring harness, we couldn’t start your vehicle.

How Does the Engine Wiring Harness Work?

There are many cables in the engine wiring harness that work to connect electricity to your vehicle parts. This vehicle part has many sensors, and they work to ensure that everything in your vehicle is in working order. Some of these major systems in your car are fuel and transmission. When you get a check engine light, you have the engine wiring harness to thank.

It works by using these cables and a fuse box. They wire the electricity produced by the engine to the various parts and sensors. It is created using high-temperature plastic or rubber because the engine heats up a lot. That could cause the engine wiring harness to melt over time. And while this is a rare occurrence, it does happen.

Think of this part of the vehicle like the brain. Without it, it wouldn’t be possible to get the information your vehicle needs. It’s always working overtime to relay the data your vehicle needs to function correctly. Whenever a sensor goes off, it’s because the engine wiring harness alerted the sensor of the problem.

The exciting thing is that as vehicles get more advanced, the engine wiring harness grows. Some say that new cars have over 100 pounds of wires, so imagine how many things could go wrong with that. In the past, there may not have been many issues. However, as things advance, there are more to go wrong.

Engine Wiring Harness protection:

Protecting the wires is crucial to the safety of the vehicle. Wires exposed to high temperatures, erosive chemicals and projectiles will be damaged leading to fires, brake failures and critical malfunctions. To prevent these issues, wires need to be bundled and covered.

install wiring insulation or heat shield sleeve material that can withstand direct contact with high-temperature surfaces and is flameproof. It needs to be a material built specifically for under hood automotive applications and withstand constant temperatures up to 125°C, or 257°F.

There are many options for protecting the wires in a vehicle’s harness. Zip ties securely bundle wire together but offer little protection or insulation. Plastic conduits offer protection from rough surfaces, although they can add weight and are not as flexible as other options. Heat-shrink tubing provides protection from heat, moisture and chemicals. However, the application is time-consuming.

Tape is another option for bundling and protecting wires. Tapes are more flexible and cost-effective than other bundling options because they can be used for protective wrapping, bundling and sealing. With a wide variety of backings and adhesives, tape can offer sound dampening, thermal and electrical insulation and abrasion protection of the same quality of the other methods. Additionally, tapes are more flexible, lighter and easier to apply than tubing or plastic conduit.

OBJECTIVE:

• Define all the mechanical connectors electrically and save it in the Catalogue.
• Place all the connectors to the required positions on the given engine 3D CAD model
• Place P-Clamps and Fir Tree clips at the required position by following the packaging rules.
• Create the Wiring Harness Routing with all the electrically defined connectors and mounting equipments.
• Create branching points at required locations to create sub branches and connect to various connectors in the geometrical bundle.
• Apply Protection coverings as required.
• Create Wiring harness flattening for the final geometrical bundle.
• Using the drafting workbench, create a drawing sheet with the flattened wiring harness.

DESIGN METHODOLOGY

Step 1- download the engine CAD data and required connectors CAD data from the given source.

Step 2- Download the required Connectors from the source and convert the mechanical connectors electrically by using the electrical part design work bench by following below steps.

• First download the connectors and mounting clip from the given link source.
• Get into the mechanical part workbench to create required geometrical parameters. Create connector connection point and bundle connection point on the required sides of the CAD part.
• Create axis system on the connector connection point such a way that the Y coordinate facing normal to the connector face, X coordinate facing towards the locking mechanism and Z coordinate facing to the top.
• Create cavity connection point for connectors having the cavity for mounting clips
• Using the geometrical parameters created,
• Define part as electrical connector.
• Define bundle connection point.
• Define connector connection point.
• Define cavity connection point.

STEP 3- Download and Define the plastic channel electrically

• Procedure for electrically defining the Channel.
• Create bundle entry point and exit point.
• Create a line curve between the main entry and exit points for creating the multi-branchable using external curve inside the channel
• Create 8 bundle entry points on the openings for connecting the injector connectors.
• Using the geometrical parameters, define the channel electrical using the define mounting equipment option.
• Create define bundle entry points using the “define bundle connection point option.”

Then create a new product assembly with channel bottom and top part assembly

STEP 4-

download and define P-clamp, L-clamp and furr tree clip.

STEP 6 – Creating the context assembly

Context assembly is nothing but the product file which contains the engine 3D-CAD data and the engine harness geometrical bundle. Here the geometrical bundle product contains all the connectors and other mounting equipments, clips and clamps which are electrically defined for the assembly. Sheet metal L-clamp are added in the main context assembly.

The we need to switch into the electrical harness assembly workbench and Geometrical bundle product file should be electrically defined using the Define Geometrical bundle option before adding any parts into it.

The Given V16 engine 3D-CAD model requires a total of 23 connectors to be placed on it and an inter connection connector for the engine wiring harness assy. The connectors used in this engine are as follows

• 8 numbers of connectors are required on the fuel injector sensors on each cylinder head, i.e.; total 16 fuel injector sensor connectors are needed.
• Total 4 numbers of cam-shaft sensor connectors are needed.
• 1 neutral position sensor connector and 1 speed sensor connector on the gear box housing.
• 1 engine coolant temperature sensor placed at the center of engine.

STEP 7 –

• Adding 4 pole connectors to all fuel injector sensors as well as for the camshaft sensors.
• 4 pole connectors should be added in the geometrical bundle using copy paste connector or directly import from the catalog created earlier.
• Connectors can be added again by copy pasting the 1^st imported connector.
• Place the connectors on all the fuel injector sensors and cam-shaft sensors using the manipulation tools like move, smart move, snap tool and also using the compass.
• Adding 4 pole connectors to all fuel injector sensors as well as for the camshaft sensors.
• 4 pole connectors should be added in the geometrical bundle using copy paste connector or directly import from the catalog created earlier.
• Connectors can be added again by copy pasting the 1^st imported connector.
• Place the connectors on all the fuel injector sensors and cam-shaft sensors using the manipulation tools like move, smart move, snap tool and also using the compass.
• However, situation of interconnection connectors are not similar to device connectors. Interconnection connectors are not parked with any device but should be pared with the help of clips/clamps/sheet metal brackets etc. possible to the packaging conditions.
• Un parked connectors can create following issues-
• Rattling noise
• Physical damage to connectors
• Uncontrolled harness routing
• Manual errors during assembly because of undefined parking.
• Assume the bundle connection from the chassis is coming from right side of the engine and therefore L-clamp is provided on the right side of the engine which provide proper support for the interconnection connector. Here the cavity clip is inserted into the hole provided on the L-clamp.
• Additional slack should be provided to the chassis bundle connecting to the engine harness interconnection connector to protect the wiring harness from vibrations caused during the vehicle operation.

STEP 8 - Wiring Harness Routing:

• First, we need to create multi-branchable bundle using the external curve option and select the line which we created earlier.
• After creating the bundle segment, create 8 branch points inside the channel for creating sub branches for the injector sensor connectors.
• Add branch points at minimum of 10mm distance from clips and clamps to create new sub branches connecting various connectors.
• After completing the routing, we need to check that if any of the bundles is interacting with the Engine part.
• There must be proper clearance between the wire bundle and the engine part.

STEP 9 - ELECTRICAL CONTINUITY CHECK

• We need to ensure that the entire bundle is fully connected.
• Go to edit and then click on search command.
• Go to advanced
• Select workbench as electrical, type as bundle segment and attribute as Fully connected
• The select result should be as TRUE or FALSE and the click search to see the connectivity analysis result.

• Selecting the "TRUE" option will show all the connected bundle segments while the selecting "FALSE" will show all the non-connected bundle segments.
• For now, we will select "TRUE" and search for results. All the bundle segments are highlighted and found showing that all the bundle segments are electrically connected.

Step 10 - WIRING HARNESS FLATTENING

Wiring harness Bundle packaging process is done. Now we need to convert the geometrical bundle into a flattened wiring harness in the Electrical Harness Flattening Workbench.

• To create the Flattened Harness, we need to create a new product file and switch into the electrical harness flattening workbench.
• Now we need to define the Harness Flattening Parameters and then Extract the geometric bundle from the wiring harness context product file.
• Then select all the branches and flatten the entire Geometric bundle.

STEP 11 – FLATTENED HARNESS VIEW IN THE DRAWING SHEET

Create a Drawing File for the flattened harness product.

• Open a new drawing file and Select front view command, then go to the flattened harness window and select a suitable face to create drafting of the harness.
• To make the bundle segments visible right click on the drawing sheet and go to properties, in the view tab, highlight '3D wireframe' and 'is always visible' in the dress up settings.

Conclusion:

In this project i have successfully routed the wiring harness for the V16 Engine assembly and the flatten-view drawing was prepared in CATIA V5. Various packaging rules and constraints were considered while routing the harness. After finalizing the wire routing, we can request the corresponding Engine design team to provide additional holes for the mounting of Furr tree clips.