Sealed Ring Terminals

Ring terminals are often installed with a wire protection (e.g. a shrinking tube) that is covering the crimp area (see the figure on the right). This implementation guideline defines how this scenario shall be represented in the KBL.

The necessity for a separate definition of this situation arises from the fact, that in the KBL wire protections are always placed on segments of the topology. For electrical end points (e.g. connectors or ring terminals) the last segment ends at a defined location, the segment connection point (a.k.a. bundle connection point). For ring terminals, the start of the crimp area is defined as segment connection point (the blue marker in the figure on the right). That means, that the wire protection (the yellow tube) is overlapping into an area that is outside of the topology (the red arrow).

A regular Protection_area assigns a Wire_protection_occurrence onto a Segment. It starts and ends on locations defined by a value that relates to the curve parameter of the segment (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 1.0). A representation of the scenario by these means (e.g. a curve parameter x < 0) is not possible without simultaneously creating a representation that is highly open to interpretation, especially for other cases (e.g. “What does a curve parameter less than zero mean for segments that end at an intersection?”).

Therefore the defined representation of this scenario is:

1. The Protection_area is defined as if it would end at the segment connection point.
2. The Wire_protection_occurrence uses the ring terminal as reference_element (possible with KBL 2.5 SR-1 and later).
3. The protection_length is the calculated length from the Protection_area plus the length of the overlapping area.