Search Results

The new idea discussed in this paper pertains to the carrier mechanism for spare wheels in heavy commercial vehicles. Typically, these vehicles are equipped with a spare wheel carrier featuring a rope mechanism for loading and unloading the spare wheel. The conventional placement of this system is on the side of the frame/chassis or within the limits of the side member. However, the tire-changing process in this system is often arduous, time-consuming, and requires significant effort. The proposed invention addresses these challenges by repositioning the spare wheel to a vertical orientation, facilitating easier access to its bolts and simplifying the removal process from the mountings. Furthermore, the innovation incorporates a three-way actuation system (Air Actuated, Electric motor-driven, or Hydraulic cylinder actuated mechanisms), thereby reducing the need for manual effort and enhancing driver comfort.

In response to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108, Side Marker lamps were equipped in both passenger and commercial vehicles. Side marker lights are designed to provide clear visibility and vehicle identification from side way to other drivers/passersby vehicles traveling in perpendicular directions. But in case of harness failure/any malfunctioning/improper maintenance post damages etc., the side marker lamp does not illuminate when it is critically required. This causes serious accidents or loss of human beings as well. Convention side markers are powered by vehicle battery; a solar side-marker operates independently using a photometric switch that activates the light at sunset using stored solar energy. This device mainly works on natural light intensity when it lowers than specific value, the solar energy stored inside device will automatically ignite the side markers, irrespective of manual human intervention to switch it on.

Demand for electrically driven vehicles has increased significantly in recent years, due to its subsidized rate, economical operation and environmentally friendly features. If discussed about India, the sales have increased by 174% in a single year. This drastic jump in sales has encouraged the current automobile manufacturers to come up with more and more electric-driven vehicle platforms in a crunch time frame. And to fulfill these requirements, manufacturers have to work a lot to introduce new technologies like E-axle, which can be space effective, less expensive and easy to assemble. But the introduction of such new technologies brings an even bigger requirement for new validation methodologies, and in the case of electric vehicles (EV) where the development time has been very less, as brought a bigger challenge of more dependency on virtual simulation.

The hybrid structure of Engine Mounts made of rubber casing with cast iron reinforcing. Use of two materials made it unique both in application and testing. The rubber provides damping for engine vibrations and the cast iron provides necessary strengthening to hold the heavy engine in place. In this research paper the FEA (Finite Element Method) methodology is being discussed to evaluate and optimize the design analysis to enhance overall engine mount capacity. The existing and modified designs are validated and considerable improvement is being observed in modified design in physical testing. Accurate modeling of engine mounts assembly is presented in this paper. FEA analysis results have good correlation with physical validation for both designs. Impact of design parameters of rubber mounts has been presented.

The Advancement in Connected vehicles Technology in recent years has propelled the use of concepts like the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data in the automotive industry. The progressive electrification of the powertrain has led to the integration of various sensors in the vehicle. The data generated by these sensors are continuously streamed through a telematics device on the vehicle. Data analytics of this data can lead to a variety of applications. Predictive maintenance is one such area where machine learning algorithms are applied to relevant data to predict failure. Field vehicle malfunction or breakdown is costly for manufacturers’ aftermarket services. In the case of commercial vehicles, downtime is the biggest concern for the customer. The use of predictive maintenance techniques can prevent many critical failures by tending to the root cause in the early stages of failure. Engine overheating is one such problem that transpires in diesel engines.

In an electric vehicle, engine is replaced with battery and transmission is replaced with traction motor. Thermal management of electric battery and motor became a necessary evaluation step in the design and development process of electric vehicles. The temperature of the traction motor coolant is required to be maintained below 600C to ensure proper functioning of the system. Coolant takes away heat from traction motor, motor controller along with an on-board charger in battery charging and discharging conditions. In this paper the cooling unit selection for the total required heat rejection from all three components is analytically calculated and thermal management methodology of liquid-cooled Electric Motor is being studied and documented with the help of numerical simulation. The results are further validated with test results in Electric bus for city application.

An optimally functioning SLI (Starting Lighting and Ignition) battery is a primordial element in the unimpaired operation of an ICE vehicle. Designed to deliver the highest current momentarily during ignition, and not intended for deep discharge, these batteries have been observed to suffer from premature degradation, attributed to misuse and lack of maintenance. Focused on the cell chemistry, a wet-cell lead-acid battery’s degradation is initiated by the reduction of active electrode area through sulfation in each charge-discharge cycle. While the formation and dissolution of sulfate crystals is a normal phenomenon, in scenarios of deep discharge the formation and agglomeration of larger insoluble sulfate crystals reduce the cell capacity leading to overall poor reserve capacity and cold cranking ability of the battery.

Engine mounts are an integral part of the vehicle that helps in reducing the vibrations generated from the engine. Engine mounts require a simple yet complicated amalgamation of two very different materials, steel and rubber. Proper adhesion between the two is required to prevent any part failure. Therefore, it becomes important that a comprehensive study is done to understand the mating phenomenon of both. A good linking between rubber and metal substrate is governed by surface pretreatment. Various methodologies such as mechanical and chemical are adopted for the same. This paper aims to present a comparative study as to which surface pretreatment has an edge over other techniques in terms of separation force required to break the bonding between the two parts. The study also presents a cost comparison between the techniques so that the best possible technique can be put to use in the commercial vehicle industry.

Ride is considered to be one of the crucial criterion for evaluating the performance of a vehicle. Automobile industry is striving for improvement in designs to provide superior passenger comfort in Commercial vehicles segment. In Industry, Quarter-car model has been used for years to study the vehicle’s ride dynamics. But due to lower DOF involved in quarter car, the output accuracy is somewhat compromised. This paper aims in development of a 7 DOF full-car Model to perform the ride- comfort analysis for Light Duty 4*2 Commercial Bus using MATLAB Simulink which can be used to tune the suspension design to meet the required ride-comfort criteria. Firstly, experimental data and Physical Parameters are collected by performing Practical Test on commercial Bus on different road profiles. Secondly, a Full Car Mathematical Model with 7 DOF has been developed for a bus using MATLAB Simulink R2018a.

Euro 6 emission norms are getting implemented in India from April 2020 and it is being viewed as one of the greatest challenges ever faced by the Indian automotive industry. In order to achieve such stringent emission norms along with top performance for vehicle, a good strategy should be incorporated to control system out NOx emissions and soot regeneration. Extruded Vanadium catalyst is deployed for this passive regeneration system with DOC (Diesel Oxidation Catalyst), DPF (Diesel Particulate Filter) and SCR (Selective Catalyst Reduction), where the amount of catalyst loading in DOC plays an apex role in deciding conversion efficiency of SCR and passive regeneration capabilities. This study mainly focuses on the impact of catalyst loading of DOC over SCR efficiency. NO2 to NOx ratio should be close to 0.5 for optimum conversion efficiency of SCR. Catalyst loading in DOC decides the amount of NO2 coming upstream to SCR.

With the improvement of standard of living, air conditioning has widely been applied in buses. However, in air conditioning buses air distribution is still needs to be improved, One of the main reasons for this sub-quality comfort is two air flow louvers arrangement for 3x2 layout air conditioner buses. Air conditioning buses hatrack louvers are an integral part in providing comfort to passengers. General trend of the numbers of louvers provided to passengers is two louvers for three seats. Disadvantage of having conventional two louvers is that, there is always one passenger left with no option of directing air towards that person. This lead to an opportunity to design three louvers type hatrack instated of conventional two louvers hatrack, for 3x2 seating layout of buses. This way all three passengers can control the louvers for their own comfort and mass of air flow is sufficient for third passenger as well.

The air purifier industry has seen a growth in terms of demand and sales lately. All credit goes to massive Industrialization in developing countries such as India. The most harmful of the pollutants are PM 2.5 articulates and NOx Emissions. This leads to the new trend of customers become health and comfort conscious and willing to pay more for better and improved transportation. To satisfy these demands, COEM’s are developing more numbers of Air conditioning buses. Although the OEM’s are meeting this demand of quantity, the quality of air from air conditioner is still suffer. One of the main reasons for this poor air quality is because of the ineffectiveness of conventional air conditioner air filters to control particulate materials i.e. PM2.5, biological pollutants i.e. microbes, bacteria, viruses, and gaseous pollutants i.e. CO, CO2, SO2, NOX, O3 & VOCs in air. As per various researches, health problems associated with bus occupant compartment air quality appear more frequently.

Highway transportation using truck is an important transport mode of goods and product to their destination. Commercial vehicle is expensive mode of transportation so it will be protected from failure. For Heavy duty truck they are fully loaded at one side of transportation and other side empty transportation. In such case lift axle grounded when truck is loaded and when truck is empty it is in lift condition. Lift axle is play important role while loading so it is important that it should not fail. Many times lift axle fails at weld location due several load come on the axle. In this paper study of weld failure to vertical, braking and lateral load come on lift axle when truck is in loading condition. Weld failure check in CAE analysis with various load cases and compare with actual physical vehicle failure. Weld failure correlation well correlate when actual loading are consider in analysis. For analysis loading data is measure from RLDA data that will be used for analysis.

This paper focuses on partial encapsulation technique for reducing air-borne noise from the rocker cover of a commercial vehicle diesel engine. Due to increasing awareness, customers demand for improvised NVH (Noise Vibration and Harshness) performance in modern day vehicles. Better NVH performance implies better comfort for passengers as well as vehicle operator. This further increases the driver up time due to reduced driver fatigue. In order to improve NVH performance of existing vehicle and observe different noise and vibration zones, detailed noise and vibration mapping was carried out on one of our vehicle platform. It is observed that engine noise is one of the major contributors for interior noise, apart from road inputs etc.

In today’s automobile industry refined NVH performance is a key feature and of high importance governing occupant comfort and overall quality impression of vehicle. In this paper interior noise and vibration measurement is done on one of the light truck and few dominant low frequency noise booms were observed in operation range. Modal analysis was done for the cabin at virtual as well as experimental level and few modes were found close to these noise booms. Vibrations were measured across the cabin mounts and it was found that the isolation of front mounts is not effective at lower frequencies. Taking this as an input, the mount design was modified to shift the natural frequency and hence improve the isolation behavior at the lowest dominant frequency. This was followed by static and dynamic measurement of the mounts at test rig level to characterize the dynamic performance and stiffness conclusion.

Downsizing and Light weighting is the latest trend in the automotive industry to achieve more fuel efficient, compact and cost effective design of vehicles. Powertrain components compromise of more than 45% of the total vehicle weight. Automakers are putting significant efforts to reduce the weight of power train components. Integrated design of aluminum Engine Head and Intake manifold has been successfully implemented. Now currently we have identified the gear box housings for downsizing in light duty trucks i.e. Existing light duty trucks Cast Iron transmission. This design has been successfully modified with integrated clutch housing and transmission housing, using lightweight aluminum as the new material, using simulation tools. This lead to weight savings of up to 30% and cost savings of 20-25% as compared to existing cast iron designs. Using an integrated design reduces the assembly cost, makes the design more compact and gives better weight balance.

In order to stand apart from the competition, there is an ever growing demand in Indian commercial vehicle segments to reach higher fuel economy while achieving the emission goals set by the BS-VI norms. With emissions standard set by BS-VI, novel techniques to improve fuel efficiency have to be considered that have least impact with respect to NOx and soot emissions. The optimization of exhaust and intake valve lifts with respect to engine speed, technology commonly known as Variable Valve Lift and Timing (VVT/VVL), has been implemented in many passenger vehicles propelled by gasoline engine. The aim of this work is do initial assessment of utilizing the VVL method on a LMD commercial vehicle diesel engine. A 3.8 litre BS-VI turbocharged EGR engine is used for this study. Valve lift and timing optimization for better fuel efficiency at rated power engine speed is carried out by using one-dimensional thermodynamic simulation software AVL BOOST.

Many methods have been developed to evaluate the fatigue life of structures when the joints are as per ideal case. But if the joints are loosening, it leads to increase in loading on the other members which causes failures. Most commonly in commercial vehicle segment welding joint & bolting joints are most popular ones. It is very easy to find out bolts strength & loosening effect in static conditions. But when vehicle is moving (i.e. dynamic condition), same method cannot be used. For this we have developed methodology to predict the bolts loosening in dynamic condition using vibration data. Similarly, loading may differ on the structural members if the welds are failing in dynamic conditions. To overcome this problem, in our organization we have a solution. Of course to simulate welding failures fatigue analysis is mandatory. We are using notch-stress approach for evaluating the welding strength of the joint.

Virtual validation of automobile components poses a huge challenge and needs continuous process improvements. One of such challenge in FE modelling of welds and understanding its behavior with respect to physical behavior. With the ongoing development of BSVI line of products in commercial vehicle industry, the virtual validation needs to be accurate and close to the physical behavior of the components. The learning and challenges faced during the previous development is implemented in the current study for weld simulation and correlation activity. The brackets welded to the power train components is taken as a challenge in the present work. Initially weld model was depicted in the CAD and was analyzed in CAE by providing proper FE connection. This practice had lot of flaws, approximations due to perpendicularity and flatness concerns in the models leading to consuming a lot of time in model preparation.

Passenger vehicles are used as one of the frequently used and versatile mode of transport. Commercial buses cater to short to long distance travel for city as well as highway applications. Thus, passenger ride comfort becomes paramount for the salability of the vehicle. Generally, it is observed that the rear seat experiences the worst ride comfort characteristics due to rear overhang and pitching characteristics of buses. Therefore the objective of this project is to improve the rear seat vibrations of passenger bus by tuning damper characteristics. Shock absorbers, being a low cost and easily interchangeable component is tuned first before optimizing other suspension parameters. The methodology is as follows: first, a 4 degree of freedom mathematical model is created on MATLAB Simulink R2015a environment. Time domain data is obtained by road load data analysis and used as an input for the mathematical model.