Design optimization of a 14 V automotive power net using a parallelized DIRECT algorithm in a physical simulation

The high power demand of electrical components in cars and the associated complexity of the 14 V power net have steadily increased in recent years. An important design criterion of the power net is the voltage stability during peak loads. This paper describes a simulation-based optimization method to fulfill the voltage stability requirements in a minimum-weight configuration of the power net. The method is applied to different power net topologies which are configured using a mixture of discrete and continuous parameters. Finally, the performance of the optimization algorithm as well as the optimization results are presented and evaluated.