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With the introduction of Connected Vehicles, it is possible to extend the limited horizon of vehicles on the road by collective perceptions, where vehicles periodically share their information with other vehicles and servers using cloud. Nevertheless, by the time the connected vehicle spread expands, it is critical to understand the validation techniques which can be used to ensure a flawless transfer of data and connectivity. Connected vehicles are mainly characterized by the smartphone application which is provided to the end customers to access the connectivity features in the vehicle. The end result which is delivered to the customer is through the integrated telematics unit in the vehicle which communicates through a communication layer with the cloud platform. The cloud server in turn interacts with the final application layer of the mobile application given to the customer.

The automotive application places very special demands on the air conditioning system. As is the case with any other process, system efficiency is very important and the automotive air-conditioning application is no exception. While the characteristics of all the major components in the air conditioning system like compressor, condenser, evaporator and blower contribute to overall system efficiency, localized inefficiencies do play a part and so must be kept to a minimum, especially in this day and age when extra emphasis is being laid on sustainability. One such phenomenon that contributes to the system inefficiency is heat pick-up in suction line. Since the temperature at the evaporator-outlet is quite lower than ambient and also its surroundings (steering system pipes and hoses, engine, air intake pipes and so on), the refrigerant picks up heat as it moves along the suction line up to the compressor inlet. This heat pick-up is detrimental to the overall system performance.

In the past five years, Indian cities have been consistently appearing in the list of top 15 world’s most polluted cities. Every day, a common man in India spends more than 2 hours on the road due to numerous reasons, thus exposed to inhale highly polluted air. Further, the passenger car users is exposed to ~ 6 times more polluted air as compared to ambient air reason being the air is recirculated through the air conditioning system. Prolonged exposure to such polluted/ recirculated air shows increasing trend in respiratory illnesses, breathing discomfort and fatigue. This paper discusses the key challenges involved in incorporating cabin air filter as cabin air quality enhancer in current mobility solutions.

Environmental regulation, operating cost reduction and meeting stringent safety norms are the predominant challenges for the automotive sector today. Automotive OEMs are facing equally aggressive challenges to meet high fuel efficiency, superior performance, low cost and weight with enhanced durability and reliability. One of the key technologies which enable light weighting and cost optimization is the use of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite in automotive chassis systems. FRP composites have high specific strength, corrosion and fatigue resistance with additional advantage of complex near net shape manufacturing and tailor made properties. These advantages makes FRPs an ideal choice for replacing conventional steel chassis automotive components. However, FRP’s face challenges from operating environment, in particular temperature and moisture.

The small commercial vehicle business is driven by demand in logistic, last mile transportation and white goods market. And to cater these businesses operational and safety needs, they require closed container on vehicle. As of now, very few OEM’s provide regulatory certified container vehicle because of constrains to meet inertia class of the vehicle. This paper focuses on design of a durable and extremely reliable container, made of the low-cost economy class glass fibre & core material. The present work provides the means to design the composite container for the N1 category of the vehicle. The weight of after-market metal container ranges between 300-350 Kg for this category of vehicle, which affects the overall fuel economy and emission of the vehicle. A detailed CAE analysis is done to design composite container suitable to meet inertia class targets and to achieve weight reduction of 30-40% as compared to metal container.

The main objective of the exhaust system is to offer a leakage proof, noise proof, safe route for exhaust gases from engine to tailpipe, where they are released into the environment, while also processing them to meet the emission norms. New stringent emission norms demand ‘near-zero’ leakage exhaust systems, throughout vehicle life bringing the joints into focus as they are highly susceptible to leakage. Needless to say, this necessitates them to endure not only structural but also the environmental loads, throughout their life. Thus, the fatigue life or durability tests become the most critical part of the exhaust system development. Test acceleration and result correlation (for life prediction), to meet the stringent project timelines and stricter environmental norms are the key considerations for developing a new testing methodology. Quality of accelerated tests is ensured by deploying all possible multiple loads, to simulate real-life conditions.

With the advent of BS VI regulations, automotive manufacturers are required to innovate the powertrains, fuel systems, exhaust and its after treatment systems to meet the regulatory requirements. The exhaust regulations can be met either by reducing the exhaust gases being generated by the engine (attacking the source) or by treating the exhaust gases in after treatment devices. The choice of the opted system varies with the manufacturer. The after-treatment devices such as catalytic converters are generally mounted in the engine compartment to take advantage of high temperature of exhaust gases to yield the reactions. Such an arrangement imposes a lot of thermal load on the peripheral components such as gearshift cables, bearings, oil seals, driveshafts etc. Thermal shields or thermal sleeve are used to address thermal issue and to protect transmission components.

The recent vehicle development demands for electric powertrain as against conventional fuels engines. The electric powertrain offers advantages in terms of cleaner and quieter operations. In electric vehicle, the conventional engine is replaced by electric motor operated on batteries. Here, the conventional engine refers to those powered by diesel, petrol, CNG and some hybrid vehicles using fuel as primary source for power generation. Thus, the system design approach for mount also changes. At present, various approaches are being followed to mount electric powertrain like conventional pendulum type, with or without cradle, Common or different motor and electric box mountings etc. The electric powertrain differs from conventional powertrain in terms of weights, mass moment of inertia, torque, NVH requirements like Key in Key off, idling, low frequency vibrations etc. Thus conventional mount will not necessarily meet NVH requirements for Electric powertrains.

EU directive 2005/64/EC on type approval of motor vehicles with respect to their Reusability, Recyclability and Recoverability ( RRR ) requires vehicle manufacturers to put in place the necessary arrangements and procedures for Parts, Materials and Weight (PMW ) data collection from full chain of supply. This is required to perform the calculations of recyclability rate and recoverability rate in line with ISO 22628. Commonly practiced data collection methodologies included spreadsheet and use of internationally available IT support system for collection of material data. Data complexity and prohibitive cost for using Internationally available IT Support systems like IMDS (International Material Data System) has led to the in-house development of IT enabled Solution customizing Siemens PLM software product (Team centre Enterprise) and SAP (SRM suite).

Success of the vehicle in the market depends on comfort provided while usage, which also include level of noise, vibration and harshness (NVH). In order to achieve good cabin comfort, the NVH levels have to be as low as possible. Powertrain is main source of NVH issues on vehicle and typically mounted on vehicle using rubber isolators. The dynamic characteristics of rubber isolators play vital role in reducing the vibrations transfer from powertrain to vehicle structure while operation and during dynamic conditions. Traditionally, isolators are manufactured using Natural Rubber (NR) to meet functional requirements which include vibration isolation and durability. At times either of above requirements has to be compromised or sacrificed due to the limitation in compounding process and other practical problems involved with manufacturing of rubber parts.

The automotive sector is going through a phase of stiff competition among various Original Equipment Manufacturers for increasing their profitability while ensuring highest levels of customer satisfaction. The biggest challenge for such companies lies in minimizing their overall cost involving investments in Research and Development, manufacturing, after sales service and warranty costs. Higher warranty costs not only affect the net profit but in turn it also affects the brand image of the company to a large extent in the long run. An effort is made here to target such warranty costs due to frequent tail pinion and hub seal leakages on single reduction/hub reduction axles of Heavy Commercial Vehicles in the field. A preliminary study involving the severity analysis of such failures is followed by a step by step investigation of these failures.

Interdependency of automotive transmission aggregates on electrical/ electronics systems is increasing day by day, offering more comfort and features. For a system integrator, it becomes very much important while selecting/designing any such component to take into consideration the relationship between such interdependent components from performance as well as endurance point of view. DMF failures due to inadequate starting system, is a major stumbling block in development of DMF for a particular vehicle application. The interface of DMF and starting system of a vehicle makes it essential to consider the effect of one on another. The study shows that the majority of DMF failures happen because of resonance phenomenon in the DMF during engine starting. The improper selection of starter motor makes the DMF more vulnerable for such failures.

This paper will present the method for activation of exterior and interior lighting system during the vehicle level fault conditions i.e. light switch failure, wiring harness faults, ignition switch failure etc. with intelligent light sensor. In vehicle the user safety is very important and exterior lighting system is playing a very important role during night driving condition. By considering the customer safety during any fault conditions i.e. light switch failure, wiring harness faults or any other faults condition the vehicle exterior and interior lighting system should not be switched off.

The engine compartment of passenger car application contains various source which radiates the produced heat and raises the temperature level of the compartment. The rise in compartment temperature increases the body temperature of individual component. The rise in body temperature of critical components can endanger the durability or functionality of the specific component or a system in which it operates. The aim of this paper is to strategize thermal protection of the rear mounted engine and its components of a vehicle having radiator and cooling fan mounted in front. An additional ventilation fan with speed sensor is fitted alongside rear mounted engine and a unique monitoring technique framed in the EMS ECU to protect critical components like HT cables, alternators, ECUs, wiring harness etc. from thermal damage. The EMS continuously monitors the engine speed, vehicle speed and the PWM signal of ventilation fan to ensure the intended operation of the ventilation fan.

Crank train torsional vibration is an important aspect for design and development of Powertrain for NVH refinement and durability. Crank train torsional vibration parameters like angular acceleration of flywheel or twist, depends upon various design parameters like geometry of crankshaft, mass of flywheel, stiffness of clutch, mass of pulley etc. It also depends upon engine operating conditions like engine speed, engine load, combustion peak pressure and combustion pressure variation etc. Most of these parameters are decided by engine power, torque, engine architecture and packaging constraints. Addition of torsional vibration damper (TVD), which works on the principle of tuned dynamic absorber, is commonly deployed design solution to control the torsional vibrations as well as stresses (to improve durability of crank train) induced in crank train assembly at specified modal frequency.

In present day passenger cars, Mobile Air Conditioning (MAC) system is one of the essential features due to rise in overall ambient temperatures and comfort expectation of customers. During the development of MAC system, the focus is on cooling capacity of system for maintaining in-cabin temperatures. However, parameters like solar radiation, air velocities at occupant, relative humidity, metabolic rate and clothing of occupants also influence occupant’s thermal comfort and normally not considered in design of the MAC system. Subjective method is used to evaluate thermal comfort inside vehicle cabin which depends mainly on human psychology. To better understand the effect and minimize the human psychological factors a large sample of people are required. That process of evaluating the comfort inside the vehicle cabin is not only time consuming but also impractical.

The entire commercial vehicle industry is moving towards weight reduction to leverage on the latest materials available to benefit in payload & fuel efficiency. General practice of weight reduction using high strength steel with reduced thickness in reference to Roark’s formula does not consider the stiffness & dent performance. While this helps to meet the targeted weight reduction keeping the stress levels within the acceptable limit, but with a penalty on stiffness & dent performance. The parameters of stiffener like thickness, section & pitching are very important while considering the Stiffness, bucking & dent performance of a dumper body. The Finite Element Model of subject dumper body has been studied in general particularly on impact of dent performance and is correlated with road load data to provide unique solution to the product. The impact of payload during loading of dumper is the major load case.

There has been immense focus on Gear Shift Quality as it is seen as an important factor for subjective evaluation of driving comfort of a vehicle with manual transmission. Synchronizer and driveline stiffness optimization is often the only area of focus for gear shift quality during early design stage. Proven Simulation models are already available for predicting the effect of synchronizer and driveline stiffness. Though Gear shift cable also has a significant effect on gear shift quality, neither design guidelines nor simulation models are available for predicting gear shift cable performance. Designers have relied on physical approach to establish cable routing, since cable routing cannot be predicted on virtual vehicle. In design phase cable routing is imagined and modeled in CAD using constrained curve geometry and later on established by physical trials on vehicle with various cable lengths, routing paths and clamp positions.

Hybridization of vehicle drive train is an important step to increase energy security, reduce crude oil import, improvement of air quality and GHG reduction. Heavy traffic congestion poses a great challenge in improvement of fuel economy. Nowadays urban climatic condition forces the passenger to keep air-conditioning (AC) on; thus further decreasing the fuel economy. In a typical urban drive; the vehicle commutes with low speed forcing IC Engine to run in its low efficiency operational points. Further it is characterized by frequent start-stop and crawling. It has been observed that the power consumption for AC is comparable to that required for the vehicle propulsion. Hence the AC on condition with propelling vehicle demands higher power from engine creating a challenge for fuel economy improvement.

Diesel engine fuel hose return line is considered as a low pressure line and consists of two layers. The inner layer is used to carry the excess fuel, thereby hose material shall have resistance to fuel and its residues. The outer layer is used to protect inner layer from heat, ozone and oil spillage, thereby outer cover material shall have resistance against the heat, ozone and engine oil. Currently NBR PVC, NBR and FKM materials have been used as inner layer materials in diesel engine fuel hose outer cover application, according to service temperature. Halogen contained CSM material has been used for outer cover application and the production of CSM material was withdrawn by one of the major manufacturer recently. Current global challenge is to use environment friendly material in vehicle components to make hazardous free environment. To replace CSM material, which contains Halogen, the available options are CPE, CR, HNBR and AEM materials.