Modeling Technology on Aircraft Cable Harness in Virtual Assembly Environment

Aircraft cable harness virtual assembly technology has an important influence on improving the efficiency of the aircraft assembly and performance of the machine. Modeling on aircraft cable harness is elementary and difficult. For aircraft cable harness elements, there are two kinds of the most common process constraints: suspension constraint and minimal bending constraint. The catenary theory has been proposed to model the elements under the suspension constraint accurately. For the elements under the minimal bending constraint the robot arm has been chosen to build the dynamic model to simulate the lying process. By controlling the parameters of the robot arm to meet the minimal bending radius requirement, the changes can be realized in time. The Aircraft Cable Harness Virtual Assembly System (ACHVAS) has been developed and the cable harness elements under the two constraints have been demonstrated in the platform to verify effectiveness of the two models.