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Role of wheel and underbody aerodynamics of vehicle in the formation of drag forces is detrimental to the fuel (energy) consumption during the course of operation at high velocities. This paper deals with the CFD simulation of the flow around the wheels of a bus with different wheel housing arrangements. Based on benchmarking, a model of a bus is selected and analysis is performed. The aerodynamic drag coefficient is obtained and turbulence around wheels is observed using ANSYS Fluent CFD simulation for different combinations of wheel-housing- at the front wheels, at the rear wheels and both in the front and rear wheels. The drag force is recorded and corresponding influence on energy consumption of a bus is evaluated mathematically. A comparison is drawn between energy consumption of bus body without wheel housing and bus body with wheel housing. The result shows a significant reduction in drag coefficient and fuel consumption.

Electric passenger car with floor battery usually have its front boot space empty and the space is used as additional luggage storage. This space can be utilized to capture the wind energy and generate electricity. Based on this, the objective of this work is to perform an aerodynamic analysis of an electric passenger car using wind turbine placed at the front. Initially the aerodynamic analysis of a basic electric car model is performed and further simulated using wind turbines and aerodynamic add-on-devices. The simulation is carried-out using ANSYS Fluent tool. Based on the simulation result, scaled down optimized model is fabricated and tested in wind tunnel for validation. The result shows reduction of drag coefficient by 5.9%.

The application in vehicle ride and handling has been mostly subjective or intuitive. There are several methods to improve vehicle stability and handling. One of the methods is suspension tuning. The objective of this work is to perform dynamical analysis of suspension by spring and damper tuning to reduce transmissibility for an all-terrain vehicle. A baseline spring rate data is used for tuning to provide better ride. The Fox air shock absorbers with progressive damping are used for testing. First the dynamics simulation is carried out by using ADAMS CAR tool. A detailed characteristic of the air shocks is obtained at various loading conditions by experimentation using test rig. Based on it, the simulation has been carried out for desired tuning parameters of spring and damper to improve stability.

Use of Supercapacitor with Li-ion Battery as an Energy Storage System (ESS) for a two wheeler can be implemented in a variety of configurations with the aim to improve the cycle life of Li-ion batteries by decreasing the current transients they are subjected to, and to increase the peak power capability of the Power pack. MATLAB/SIMULINK tool is used as simulation software to model the Road Profile, Vehicle, Electric Powertrain and the Hybrid ESS (HESS). In this paper, the effect of different topologies of HESS and effect of degree of hybridization is analyzed w.r.t. current profile, voltage profile and State of Charge (SOC). Results show that use of HESS for Electric two wheeler in place of battery decreases the Peak/RMS Current experienced by the battery with corresponding improvement in battery life.