IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2020 - 68

visualization, data analysis, data mining, and human-
computer interaction, among others. It has been employed
in different disciplines to gain knowledge, amplify cognition, and get insights from large and complex data sets.
In electrical systems, some contributions have been made
by means of VA; however, all of them focused only on
power systems, not on extensive, weakly meshed, and
structurally complex low-voltage dc distribution networks, as in the case of vehicles. The inclusion of VA precepts and tools in onboard EDS simulation platforms
would be of high significance, as it may permit the development of aesthetic yet functional interfaces, enhance
intrinsic knowledge from designers, improve the visualization of electrical parameters, determine risky or
unsuitable electrical configurations, and perform batch
simulation and data mining, among others. Many possibilities appear just by adding some interactive techniques,
such as color contouring, animation, data aggregation, and
automatic layout generation, are included. Figure 7 exemplifies the use of those techniques in interfaces for electrical networks of other ambits. However, the reader can
infer an idea of the possibilities for VA practices to leverage interactivity, assist knowledge acquisition, enhance
user experience, and achieve the visualization needs of
the intricated EDSs of vehicles.

Conclusions
The design of vehicular electrical networks is a highly
challenging stage in the automotive industry as a consequence of the complex, large, and disperse electrical data
from manufacturers and suppliers. Indeed, for a particular
car model, there are huge numbers of possible wiring
paths, configurations, and components. This necessitates
a great logistic and engineering effort to suitably accomplish customization and the newly required functionalities. On this subject, the development of interactive and
robust software platforms able to visualize and simulate
the onboard EDS has been justified in this article. These
computational tools can be of great significance to help
engineers study the network under various conditions
and topologies before a prototyping stage. Therefore, inappropriate configurations may be promptly discarded, thus
shortening the design process.
To perform numerical simulation in the onboard EDS, a
data preprocessing stage is first needed to collect the
required electrical information from different manufacturing data files. To perform a power-flow analysis, the BFS
method has been employed by virtue of its practicality,
high convergence speed, and adaptability to slightly
meshed topologies, as in the case of vehicular networks.
Some remarks on and results of the custom-developed
power-flow algorithm have been provided. The proposed
case study exhibits consistency in the attained voltage
drops and branch currents throughout all of the elements.
As part of future work and research, the inclusion of the
described new functionalities will become more relevant in

I E E E E l e c t r i f i cati o n M agaz ine / MARCH 2020

coming years, as vehicular EDSs will be required to become
smarter to robustly support driving assistance, flexible
gadget connectivity, and extended electrified traction.

For Further Reading
"2 km of wiring weighing 42 kg: The neurons and arteries of
the SEAT Ateca," SEAT, S.A., Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 14, 2019.
Accessed on Sept. 18, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://bit
.ly/2kQGpqw
P. Arboleya, B. Mohamed, C. Gonzalez-Moran, and I. ElSayed, "BFS algorithm for voltage-constrained meshed DC
traction networks with nonsmooth voltage-dependent loads
and generators," IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 1526-
1536, Mar. 2016. doi: 10.1109/TPWRS.2015.2420574.
P. Mantilla-Perez, J. Perez-Rua, M. Diaz-Millan, X. Dominguez, and P. Arboleya, "Power flow simulation in the product
development process of modern vehicular DC distribution
systems," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. Syst., to be published.
A. Rius, "A novel optimization methodology of modular
wiring harnesses in modern vehicles: Weight reduction and
safe operation," Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, 2017.
C. Brogle, C. Zhang, K. L. Lim, and T. Bräunl, "Hardware-inthe-loop autonomous driving simulation without real-time
constraints," IEEE Trans. Intell. Veh., vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 375-384,
Sept. 2019. doi: 10.1109/TIV.2019.2919457.
H. Zhang, Y. Zhang, and C. Yin, "Hardware-in-the-loop
simulation of robust mode transition control for a series-parallel hybrid electric vehicle," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 65,
no. 3, pp. 1059-1069, Mar. 2016. doi: 10.1109/TVT.2015.2486558.
H. V. Nguyen, D. To, and D. Lee, "Onboard battery chargers
for plug-in electric vehicles with dual functional circuit for
low-voltage battery charging and active power decoupling,"
IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 70,212-70,222, Oct. 2018. doi: 10.1109/
ACCESS.2018.2876645.
J. G. Pinto, V. Monteiro, H. Gonçalves, and J. L. Afonso,
"Onboard reconfigurable battery charger for electric vehicles
with traction-to-auxiliary mode," IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol.
63, no. 3, pp. 1104-1116, Mar. 2014. doi: 10.1109/TVT.2013.2283531.
X. Dominguez, P. Arboleya, P. Mantilla-Perez, I. El-Sayed, N.
Gimenez, and M. Diaz-Millan, "Visual analytics-based computational tool for electrical distribution systems of vehicles," in
Proc. IEEE 2019 Vehicular Power and Propulsion Conf. (VPPC), Vietnam, Oct. 2019, pp. 1-5.
T. Lawanson, R. Karandeh, V. Cecchi, Z. Wartell, and I. Cho,
"Improving power distribution system situational awareness
using visual analytics," in Proc. SoutheastCon 2018, St. Petersburg, FL, 2018, pp. 1-6.
P. C. Wong, Z. Huang, Y. Chen, P. Mackey, and S. Jin, "Visual
analytics for power grid contingency analysis," IEEE Comput.
Graph. Appl. Mag., vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 42-51, Jan.-Feb. 2014.
T. Overbye and J. Weber, "Smart grid wide-area transmission system visualization," Engineering, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 466-
474, 2015.

Biographies
Xavier Dominguez (uo233585@uniovi.es) is with the University of Oviedo and Universidad Tecnica del Norte.
Paola Mantilla-Perez (paola.mantilla@seat.es) is with
SEAT S.A. (Spanish car manufacturer, part of the Volkswagen Group) and the University of Oviedo.
Pablo Arboleya (arboleyapablo@uniovi.es) is with the
University of Oviedo.

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IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2020

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