Experimental Characterization and Dynamic Modelling of Electrical Cables 2022-01-0952

Electric high voltage (HV) cables are commonly used in electrified vehicles. These cables are well known for being potential flanking transmission paths for structure-borne sound in a broad frequency range and must therefore be included in the NVH design process. Although many different layouts exist automotive HV cables fundamentally exhibit a layered structure consisting of a conductive core covered by, in sequence, an isolating sheath, a wire mesh shield to minimize electromagnetic interference and an outer jacket. The conductive core consists of hundreds of thin copper or aluminum wires organized in strands which are wound in a helical pattern. An extensive measurement campaign was carried out to dynamically characterize different cable specimen in terms of multi-degree of freedom transfer impedances. It was shown that although the cable exhibits a direction-dependent Young’s modulus and loss factor suitable results could be obtained by modelling the conductive core using an isotropic multi-layer continuum model. The model was experimentally validated for a test case featuring strong dynamic coupling and showed encouraging results until 2 kHz.