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The cost of fuels used for automobile are rising in India on account of high global crude oil prices. The fuel cost constitutes major portion of total cost of operation for Heavy commercial vehicles. Hence, the trend is to carry the goods transport through higher payload capacity rigid/straight trucks that offer lower transportation cost per unit of goods transported. This is driving the design of multi-axle heavy trucks that have lift axles. In addition, improved network of highways and road infrastructure is leading to increase in average operating speed of heavy commercial vehicles. It has made increased focus on occupant as well as road safety while designing the heavy trucks. Hence, the analysis of lift axle suspension from the point of view of vehicle handling and stability is essential. There are two basic kinds of lift axle designs used in heavy commercial vehicles: self-steered lift axle having single tire on each side and non-steered lift axle with dual tires on each side.

Increased popularity on SUV category in the market has led to high focus on performance attributes of SUVs. Considering high weight & CoG achieving target handling performance is always a challenge. Static Wheel Alignment parameters, especially Camber have shown significant contribution in Handling attributes of vehicle. This paper presents an experimental study on change in wheel camber under the influence of different vehicle loading conditions. In SUVs, generally wheel is subjected to large deflection from its high static loads which makes it quite difficult to maintain an ideal camber angle. Hence, it is important to analyze the camber angle variations under actual loading conditions. An in-house fixture is developed to emulate the actual vehicle loading conditions at rear wheel end. The multi-link rigid axle suspension with watt’s link assembly is mounted on the chassis-frame which is rigidly fixed to ground, and loads are achieved through hydraulic actuators at Wheels.

The standard usage of Combined Braking System (CBS) in lower cc/power 2-wheeler vehicles serves to reduce stopping distance and improve braking stability. The CBS system achieves this by engaging both the front and rear wheel brakes, taking advantage of the high load transfer characteristic during 2-wheeler braking. However, the current design of the CBS system relies on linear system analysis, based on vehicle geometry, load distribution, and tire-road friction. This approach overlooks the non-linearities inherent in braking dynamics, such as tire behavior and dynamic Center of Gravity (CoG) location. Consequently, the current CBS design methodology exhibits limitations, particularly in extreme scenarios where wheel lock-up may occur, such as on low friction surfaces or during panic braking. This paper proposes the incorporation of tire non-linearities into the design of CBS systems using Pacejka’s tire model.

Heavy Commercial Road Vehicles (HCRVs) may be more susceptible to rollover incidents due to their higher centre of gravity position than passenger vehicles, and rollover is one of the significant causes of HCRV accidents. Therefore, variation in vehicle roll behaviour becomes crucial to the safety of an HCRV. Toe misalignment is a commonly observed phenomenon in HCRVs, and studying its impact on roll behaviour is important. In this study, the impact of the symmetric toe and thrust misalignment on the roll behaviour of an HCRV is analysed using IPG TruckMaker®, a vehicle dynamics simulation software. A ramp steer manoeuvre was used for the simulations, and the toe misalignment on a wheel was chosen from the range [-0.21°, 0.21°]. Variation in roll behaviour was quantified using the steering wheel angle at which one-wheel lift-off (OWL) occurred (SWAL).

The electric vehicle market in India has tremendous growth potential in the upcoming years and decades, attracting numerous automotive manufacturers, including Tier-1 suppliers, seeking to participate in this growth phase. Electric powertrains used in e-cars on Indian roads comply with BIS and AIS standards. However, these standards alone do not provide sufficient clarity on the complete list of tests required for developing an e-Axle through all stages of development. Developing the e-Axle in-house for the Indian market poses a significant challenge for OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers, as it will play a crucial role in overall profitability at high volumes in the long term. Adhering solely to the BIS and AIS standards may prove insufficient in fulfilling the developmental prerequisites of an electric axle (e-Axle) system.

An Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) provides vehicle acceleration that can be used in Active Vehicle Safety Systems (AVSSs). However, the signal output from an IMU is affected by changes in its position in the vehicle and alignment, which may lead to degradation in AVSS performance. Investigators have employed physics and data-based models for countering the impact of sensor misalignment, and the effects of gravity on acceleration measurements. While physics-based methods utilize parameters varying dynamically with vehicle motion, data-based methods require an extensive number of parameters making them computationally expensive. These factors make the above-explored methods practically challenging to implement on production vehicles. This study considers a 6-axis IMU and evaluates its impact on Antilock Braking System (ABS) performance by considering the IMU signal obtained with different mounting orientations, and positions on a Heavy Commercial Road Vehicle (HCRV).

For more than a century, pneumatic (air-inflated) tires have totally dominated the market for road vehicle tires. However, in the recent two decades, interest has grown in developing airless tires. Some of the authors were involved in design of an early version in composite material 15-30 years ago for passenger cars. Presently, the EU project LEON-T (Low particle Emissions and lOw Noise Tyres) includes a part in which prototypes for innovative heavy goods vehicle (HGV) tires are developed, with the main purpose to reduce noise emission by 6 dB. To reduce noise that much it is believed that airless tires are needed. A special challenge is to get a durable design able to carry typical truck tire loads. This paper introduces the principal design of airless tires. Airless tire prototypes are intended to be developed by partner Euroturbine, in cooperation with mainly Applus+ IDIADA, VTI and subcontractor Lightness by Design.

The Indian automotive industry is striving towards more safe and durable vehicles. A need was felt to study the effect of changes in axle static loads on fatigue life of the axle components. Also, there was a need to develop generic test method, as there are no test standards or generic methods available in public domain for fatigue testing of commercial vehicle axles. The study was carried out to check direct effect of change in axle loads on various connections on axle, effect of suspension configuration and force distribution, Vehicle dynamics, etc. In this paper, an India specific generic load spectra was evaluated for accelerated laboratory validation. Paper discusses the methodology as; study of heavy commercial vehicle systems, road load data collection on identified test vehicles w.r.t. test matrix finalized, India specific test loads and load spectra development, normalization of axle load spectra w.r.t to static axle weights and arriving at test guidelines.

The Heavy Duty live rear axles in commercial vehicle helps to transmit the drive to the rear wheels and also carries vehicle load. The rear axle along with wheel assembly consists of axle casing, differential unit, half shafts, wheel hub, brake drum, brake chamber and wheels. It is one of the major safety critical element in any commercial vehicle. Based on the suspension type, rear axle housing also carries V rod & radius rod mountings & Spring Seat /Wear pad / Rubber Bolster (in case of bogie suspension). This paper abbreviates the contribution of bogie suspension seating configurations & V-rod Forces on life of heavy duty bogie rear axle casing. In-service DRT hot spot observations were reported on heavy duty rear axle on few models with bogie suspension. In order to find the root cause, devising a proper testing and analysis method is of prime importance. An extensive effort was made to device test methodology based on customer application and field visits.

Axles are a prominent part of automotive design. Along with a power transmission and differential system, axles support a vehicle’s weight and road-load reactions. Axles carry different attachments such as brakes and suspensions using brackets. Welds play an important role in design and longevity of bracket assemblies. Welds can be susceptible to fractures caused by intrusions akin to cracks and/or discontinuities, compounded by stress concentration due to weld profile and welding processes. Additionally, the simultaneous optimization of both brackets and welds remains a challenge with limited available methods. While topography or shape optimization techniques can enhance bracket robustness by minimizing compliance as the objective, this approach might inadvertently elevate the likelihood of weld fracture if weld dimensions are not concurrently updated.

With the recent development in virtual modelling and vehicle simulation technology, many OEM’s worldwide are using digital road profiles in virtual environment for vehicle durability load prediction and virtual design evaluation. For precise simulation results, it is important to have the tire digital twin which is the realistic representation of tire in the virtual environment. The study comprises of discussion about different types of tire models such as empirical, solid model, rigid ring model and flexural ring models such as Pacejka, MF Swift, CD tire, F tire etc. and also the complexity involved in development of these tire models. Generation of virtual tire model requires highly sophisticated test rigs as well as vehicle level testing with Wheel Force transducers and other vehicle dynamics sensors. The large number of data points generated with testing are converted in standard TYDEX format to be further processed in various software tool for virtual model generation.

Climate change due to global warming are major concerns. Electric vehicles are one of the promising technologies to curb the climate change by reducing CO2 emissions significantly. Electric vehicle component selection is a complex process, which has to fulfil multiple requirements with trade-off between performance & efficiency, efficiency & cost, performance & NVH, packaging & performance etc. In addition, E-drive selection in passenger & commercial vehicle is different due to application difference. Hence, it is a great challenge to select right E-Drive comprising motor, MCU and overall gear ratio to meet EV program constraints and targets. This study focuses on criterion used for selecting an E-Drive system comprising motor, MCU and overall gear ratio for electric vehicles in commercial and passenger vehicle segments.

In this paper, we introduce one imu radar loosely coupled SLAM method based on our 4D millimeter-wave image radar which it outputs pointcloud containing xyz position information and power information in our autonomous vehicles. at common pointcloud-based slam such as lidar slam usually adopt imu-lidar tightly coupled structure, which slam front end outputs odometry reversly affect imu preintegration. slam system badness occurs when front end odometry drift bigger and bigger or one frame pointcloud match failed. so in our method, we decouple imu and radar odometry crossed relationship, fusing imu and wheel odometry to generate one rough pose trajectory as initial guess value for front end registration, not directly from radar estimated odometry pose, that is to say, front end registration is independent of imu preintegration. besides, we empirically propose one idea juding front end registration result to identify match-less environment and adopt relative wheel odometry pose instead of registration pose when match belief value(mbv) is false. this can handle some degrade environment, such as two-side similar greenbelt. finally, to increase loop detection robustness, we propose two-stage loop detection verify method. first stage is RS(radius search) method, if it passes loop verify, not enter second stage, otherwise enter SC(scan context) second stage, after two stage loop, most real loop can be detected by our slam system. based on above ideas, at multi scene’s datasets, office park, residential area, open road, underground parkingplace etc, we can run our slam system successfully, meanwhile at our office park dataset we compare trajectory precision with tightly-coupled slam structure and the detected loop number with one stage loop method, exprimental result proved our proposed method is valid.

For distributed drive electric vehicles (DDEV) equipped with an electronic hydraulic braking system (EHB) and four-wheel hub motors, when one or more hub motors have regenerative braking failure, because the braking torque of the four wheels is inconsistent, additional yaw moment will be formed on the vehicle, resulting in the loss of directional stability of the vehicle during braking. If it occurs at high speeds, it will further threaten driving safety. To solve the above problems, a new hierarchical control architecture is established in this paper. Firstly, taking DDEV as the research object, the vehicle dynamics model and EHB braking system model are built. Then, a state observer based on an adaptive Kalman filter is designed in the upper layer to estimate the vehicle’s sideslip angle and yaw rate in real time.

Automotive dampers are essential vehicle components regarding vehicle dynamics by keeping the road contact and reducing wheel load fluctuations. So damper degradation could not only significantly influence driving comfort but also the dynamics and therefore driving safety. The aim of this study is to expand knowledge about the behavior of passive automotive twin-tube dampers degraded by loss of oil and pressure. This serves to improve the understanding of inner processes of the damper and modeling the behavior of degraded dampers. To analyze the damper behavior, an intact damper has been modified and validated to allow adjusting the oil and pressure level. Using a dynamic hydraulic damper test rig a preconditioning routine for degraded dampers is developed. With this routine, a wide measurement program at various amplitudes, frequencies, oscillations, and damper configurations is carried out and the obtained results are discussed.

The increasing demand for electric mobility has brought about significant advancements in tyre design. This paper covers the latest developments in tyre design that cater specifically to the needs of electric vehicles (EVs). EVs have unique performance characteristics that place greater emphasis on tyre requirements like High traction, Wear resistance, Low Cavity & pattern noise, Low Rolling resistance and High load carrying capacity. Hence, the tyre manufacturers have been working relentlessly to create advanced designs that can meet these requirements. This paper will cover various aspects of tyre design, including tyre cavity, tread patterns, sidewall design, compound & reinforcement design, and various construction techniques. The tyre cavity and tread pattern play a crucial role in the overall performance of an EV.

Surface integrity is an important factor in the effective functioning of a component. For this reason, the surface finish is given as meticulous attention as possible, while quality checks are rigorous. The process parameters affecting surface roughness are carefully controlled, with many preventive measures enforced to avoid deviation from the tolerance limits. Surface finish is an important part of the load-bearing properties of a surface as the asperities on its surface first come into contact with the mating surfaces. On contact, the asperities are flattened, and there is debris formation. These asperities are critical in joint replacements where Titanium is a material of choice, as the debris can react with bones and even cause necrosis of bone. The surface finish of Titanium is important as the asperities can function as points of stress when subjected to loads. Stress concentrators are detrimental to a material’s life; therefore, a part’s surface finish becomes critical.

Deadweight as payload is an important parameter, which affects the vehicle dynamics and durability of the vehicle. This paper presents a study performed to evaluate the effect of deadweight on dynamic input load, suspension operation, and fatigue life of frame in a two wheeler. Also, an optimization exercise was undertaken to correlate and optimize deadweight with a human payload in terms of equivalent damage to the frame. Strain, wheel acceleration, and suspension displacement data were acquired with pillion and multiple deadweights and compared. Relative damage spectrum (RDS) characterization and best-fit optimization methods were used for deadweight correlation. It was observed that with deadweight addition dynamic loads decreases on the front wheel while increases on the rear. Strain damage wise increasing deadweights have marginal effects on the front zone of the frame while on the middle and rear side, deadweights are detrimental.

The brake systems are given top priority by automotive OEMs in the development of medium and heavy commercial trucks and buses, which can carry increased loads. When trucks and buses are travelling at high speeds or crossing downhill, during braking operations, the friction faces (brake drum and liner) experience a significant rise in temperature due to the conversion of kinetic energy into heat energy within seconds. This lowers the friction coefficient at the interface, resulting in distortions, thermal cracks, hub grease burning, and overheating. Drum brake system designs must be improved and optimized to dissipate more heat from the brake drum assembly and prevent brake failure. Nowadays advance transient numerical simulations assist in the design, development and optimization of the brake system to visualize 3D flow physics and temperature variations throughout the brake duty cycles. In the current study, different Cases of drum brakes to improve cooling efficiency are evaluated.

This paper uses the brake control allocation method for Electric Vehicles (EVs) based on system-level vehicle Reference Point (RP) motion feedback. The RP motion control is an alternative to the standard brake torque allocation methods and results in improved vehicle stability in both longitudinal and lateral directions without requiring additional measurements beyond what is available in EVs with ABS and ESP. The proposed control law simplifies the brake torque allocation algorithm, reduces overall development time and effort, and merges most of the braking systems into one. Additionally, the measured or estimated signals required are reduced compared to the standard approach. The system-level RP measurements and references are transformed into individual wheel coordinate systems, where tracking is ensured by actuating both friction torques and electric motor regenerative torques using a proposed brake torque blending mechanism.