Proposal of a Thermal Network Model for Fast Solution of Temperature Rise Characteristics of Aircraft Wire Harnesses

The design of aircraft electrical wiring interconnection systems (EWISs) is central to ensuring the safe and reliable operation of aircraft. The calculation of the temperature rise characteristics of aircraft wire harnesses is one of the key technologies in EWIS design, directly affecting the safety margin of the system. However, existing calculation methods generally face a bottleneck in the balance between speed and accuracy, failing to meet the requirements of actual engineering applications. In this paper, we conduct an in-depth study on this issue. Firstly, a finite element harness model is established to accurately obtain the convective heat transfer coefficients of wires and harnesses. Based on the analysis of the influencing factors of the thermal network model for a single wire, an improved thermal resistance hierarchical wire thermal network model is proposed. A structure consisting of series thermal resistance within layers and iterative parallel algorithms between layers is proposed to equivalently integrate and iteratively calculate the mutual thermal influence relationship between each layer of the harness, thereby constructing a hierarchical harness thermal network model. This model successfully achieves a significant improvement in calculation speed while effectively ensuring useable temperature rise results, providing an effective method for EWIS design.