ABSTRACT Slender composite structures occur in automotive applications in different variations and on different size scales. They range from single conductors, which are composite structures themselves, to wiring harnesses, where another level of complexity is added by bundling several cables. In this work, we investigate the interactions between the two wires in a simple twisted pair, a strand of two twisted tinned copper wires, using experiments, and finite element (FE) simulations. This allows for the investigation of the beam‐to‐beam contact and its influence on the strand behavior. The 3D shape of flexible slender objects is typically determined by bending and torsional loads and their combinations. Thus, we perform experiments on the metal twisted pair under bending, torsion, and coupled load, that is, bending under pre‐torsion. The experimental boundary conditions are transferred to FE simulations using beam elements with quadratic shape functions. Beam‐to‐beam contact is modeled using a penalty formulation, and the friction model follows Coulomb's law. Using material parameters derived from measurements of single wires, we investigate the influence of structural effects, that is, frictional contact and material inelasticity on the composite behavior. We find good agreement between experimental and numerical results, obtained using an elastoplastic material model for the individual wires in the case of bending and torsional loads, including a good approximation of the size of the hysteresis. In coupled loading, however, simulation and experiment shows different trends in the dependence of the bending response on pre‐torsions. Nevertheless, the overall agreement between experiment and simulation in the coupled case is good.
Hawwash et al. (Thu,) studied this question.