Design and testing of wire harness protective conduits

Three types of wire harnesses and their protective circuits were designed for use with the AN/USM-27 Versatile Avionics Shop Test (VAST) system for the automatic testing of the S-3A aircraft avionics. This paper describes the design and development of this wire-harness conduit system, provides a list of design constraints, and evaluates tradeoffs in an effort to indicate conduit properties likely to be desirable in a given design microenvironment. The various conduit materials and their limitations are discussed, and a conduit systems design checklist is included.