Comprehensive Numeric-Based Selectivity Analysis of Vehicular Electronic Fuses' Wire Protection Algorithms

To realize autonomous driving functions, a fail-operational vehicular power system is fundamental. For this purpose, the selective triggering of electronic fuses in case of a thermal wire overload is mandatory. An analytic triggering time determination as proposed in previous studies is a computational efficient approach for selectivity analyses of wire protection algorithms. However, applying this methodology is only possible with some constraints. In this paper, a numeric-based tool to avoid the limitations of the analytic approach is introduced. The tool enables the consideration of possible influencing factors (e.g. filtering, sampling, measurement accuracy, hardware-related switching off delay) on the triggering time of the wire protection mechanism and arbitrary realistic current profiles received from measurement or simulation can be examined. The investigation shows the crucial influence of signal filtering and sampling time on the selectivity. Hence, possible filtering and unfavorable constellations of the sampling have to be considered in comprehensive selectivity analyses. However, such non-constant current profiles resulting from filtering, and complex sampling scenarios cannot be examined with the analytic methodology and thus, require the numeric-based tool.