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C. Gabriel:
"Development of an Advanced Protection Concept for Automotive Wire Harnesses";
Supervisor: R. Grosu, H.-P. Kreuter, D. Ratasich, O. Höftberger; Institut für Technische Informatik, 2016; final examination: 2016-10-04.

Wire harnesses in the automotive area contain a multitude of wires nowadays with a combined length of several kilometres. In order to fulfil the safety requirements in the automotive area and considering the different thermal properties the used wires and fuses are often oversized. This yields a tremendous potential for reducing costs since the wires are not being used to capacity. This thesis covers the efficient implementation of an electronic fuse based on the thermal model of the used wire. The thermal model is used to calculate the temperature difference between the ambient temperature and the wire temperature. If the temperature of the wire is too high the fuse can open the circuit and prevent damage to the wire. After
explaining the general concept, methods of optimization are introduced. An efficient temperature calculation is important to reduce resource consumption and manufacturing costs. The proposed concept allows to use wires up to capacity and therefore significant
weight reduction is possible. Several optimized calculation options are presented and a functional demonstrator was built as a proof of concept based on a micro controller. Additionally, hardware modules were developed in order to compare resource consumption of the different methods in the case of a hardware solution. A final valuation comparing the optimized methods with actual temperature measurements shows that the different optimizations are all suitable to calculate the wire temperature and thus allow an efficient fuse design.