The Effect of Solid State Switching Devices on Weight Optimized Wiring Harnesses

Current vehicle wiring harness design is foundationally affected by several key requirements. One of these, the need for a single or small number of co-located circuit protection centers, dictates the topology that most vehicles in production today use. By relaxing this requirement through the use of relatively new semiconductor devices, a fundamentally different wiring topology can be realized, one that has superior weight characteristics and a less wire intensive topology. This paper will discuss the requirements on the semiconductor devices necessary to fulfill this requirement and the market implications of the overall approach.