The Development of Lab-Simulation Test to Accelerate the Durability Validation of Engine Mounting and Wiring Harness

With the advent of cars with computerized engines, drivers sometimes suffer discomfort with “check engine” light problem, and as a result, insist on increasing levels of reliability in their cars. Hence, reliability of the wiring harness has become a very important automotive design characteristic. On one hand, the more secure an engine mounting system is, the more stable the engine wiring harness is. In order to enhance their durability, car manufacturers need to perform many validation tests during the development phase which involves a lot of time and cost.

In this study, a newly developed lab-simulation test is proposed to qualify the design of engine mounting and engine wiring early in the design cycle and reduce time and expense. The lab-simulation test has contributed to a significant cost and time reduction and has shown good correlation to the original proving ground test. The completion of a durability test course based on road load data acquisition (RLDA), a technique for simulation by multi-axial simulation table (MAST), and some applications are also described in this paper.