Overview
The industrialisation of an aircraft electrical harness relies almost entirely on manual methods. When changes are needed, wiring diagrams have to be checked manually and a new harness design process has to be started to integrate modifications. CAD (Computer Aided Design) exchanges are also very difficult in this field (due to hardware/software incompatibilities). To assess electric harness behaviour, simulation is very rarely used and existing symbol recognition methods are unsatisfactory.
FRESH proposed to design a specific and innovative recognition methodology to lead to an automatically generated system.
The main objectives of the project were:
- To convert electric wiring plans into Computer Aided Design wiring diagram language.
- To translate CAD-generated wiring language into a universal language.
- To adapt and improve available software to transfer wiring diagrams (in a universal language) into electrical harnesses.
- To simulate electrical harnesses' physical behaviour, and benefit from simulation verification and optimisation capabilities.
And as a consequence:
- Reduce electrical harness development costs.
- Produce an error-free intervention level.
- Reduce harness modification, maintenance and overhauling costs.
The project will yield:
- An automated system to recognise paper electrical wiring diagrams and to convert them into reconstructed numerical wiring information.
- Dedicated modules to convert the reconstructed wiring information into a language understandable by classical tools to generate the harness.
- A system to design, through computing, the geometric plan of the harness.
- A smart electrical harness simulation system to check the electrical validity of the wiring diagrams and harness.
FRESH comprised seven major Work Packages, without counting Work Package 0, which deals with project management.
- Work Package 1 dealt with specifications (selection of an example of a paper-wiring diagram as a basis of the research, ergonomic standards for targeted harness geographical plans and envelope boundaries of wiring and harness simulations).
- Work Package 2 addressed wiring diagram recognition (methodology for recognition).
- Work Package 3 dealt with the conversion of paper or CAD wiring diagrams into a universal language (PIVOT).
- Work Package 4 dealt with harness numerical geometric plans (to adapt and improve freeware to transfer wiring diagrams into electrical harness).
- Work Package 5 addressed wiring and harness simulation (by research on the algorithms and models to simulate the diagrams in a factual way).
- Work Package 6 dealt with the global automation system prototyping (a validated, fully automatic process for harness optimisation and smart maintenance).
- Work Package 7 dealt with dissemination and exploitation (to give general awareness on project results and to prepare the future industrial exploitation of project results).
Funding
Results
The objective of the FRESH project was to convert electrical wiring plans into CAD wiring diagrams, which were then used to design the aircraft's electrical harness. The aim of the consortium was to concentrate on new technologies for converting automatic wiring plans into harness simulations.
Both old and new aircraft can benefit from the new technique. For older aircraft not designed using CAD, the project developed an innovative method for automatically capturing paper plans and translating them into a universal language.
The project also adapted and improved available software that uses universal language to change wiring diagrams into electrical harnesses. FRESH researchers put together a system for using computer design to create the geometric plan of the harness. An electrical harness simulation system was developed for checking the electrical validity of the wiring diagrams and harness, .
The FRESH project achieved all of its objectives and demonstrated an operational prototype at the Bourget Air Show, Paris. Both large-scale manufacturers and SMEs have expressed an interest in the FRESH system as a result of its reduced costs for production and design modification.
A reduction in the amount of time spent in modifying, maintenance and overhauling the electrical harness will result in significant cost savings. The FRESH project will help the aviation industry to become more competitive, thereby boosting Europe's economy.