JRG Wiring Technologies

The drivetrains and power systems equipped in personal and commercial vehicles, aircraft and also watercraft are rapidly changing for good reasons. Electrification helps to increase the total system efficiency and enables the use of renewable energy in the mobility sector. No matter if the energy is stored in batteries or green hydrogen. This is why a lot of research is performed at TU Braunschweig on electrical drives, energy storage technologies, fuel cell systems, power electronics, mobile energy systems and new mobility concepts. The Junior Research Group Wiring Technologies supplements these activities with a special focus on new possibilities for the physical realisation of electrical power systems and wire harnesses. This research work includes topics like the use of novell materials, the consideration of cable properties in drive system modelling and analysis, new wiring concepts and functional integration in wire harnesses. The results will hopefully shape the way mobile electrical power systems are realised in a more sustainable electrified future.

In detail, our research focuses on the following topics:

• Especially for the use in high power and weight sensitive applications like airplanes, superconducting cables are a promising technology. We therefore aim at describing the special properties and requirements of these cables to minimize power losses and cooling equipments.
• In modern electrical drive systems with efficient and very fast switching devices the impact of parasitic properties of plugs and cables can no longer be neglected in simulation, loss estimation and system design. Therefore suitable wide bandwidth modells for cables have to be derived to allow appropriate consideration.
• For vehicles‘ wire harnesses the automotive industry tackles a couple of challenges like increasing bandwidth requirements and safety demands due to more autonomous driving functions, highly automated fabrication and assembly as well as reliable and sustainable raw material supply. We support this field of technological transformation, e.g. with research on functional integration in wire harnesses.