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The need for eco-friendly vehicle powertrains has increased drastically in recent years. The most critical component of an electric vehicle is the battery pack/cell. The choice of the appropriate cell directly determines the size, performance, range, life, and cost of the vehicle. Lithium-ion batteries with high energy density and higher cycle life play a crucial role in the progress of the electric vehicle. However, the packaging of lithium-ion cells is expected to meet lots of assembly demands to increase their life and improve their functional safety. Due to their low mechanical stability, the lithium-ion cell modules must have external pressure on the cell surface for improved performance. The cells must be stacked in a compressed condition to exert the desired pressure on the cell surface using compression foam/pads. The compression pads can be either packaged between each cell or once in every set of cells based on the cell assembly requirements.

In farm tractors, front end loaders are becoming popular attachments for primarily material handling such as loading, moving and unloading of woodchips, sand, gravels etc. It is also used for some severe load application such as tree uprooting and ripping operation which requires validation of loader frame and tractor as well. To validate the design, a standard pull-push test is carried out on tractor with loader in a laboratory. In this test front loader bucket is pushed against a rigidly clamped fixture with full engine throttle and maximum hydraulic cylinder pressure of loader. To avoid surprise failures during the test, a virtual simulation method needs to be developed and validated. In this paper, a method has been proposed by authors for the above objective. A multi-body dynamics model of tractor with loader is created in MSC ADAMS and actual event is simulated using test loads & boundary conditions.

This paper deals with the study of the phenomenon of crevice corrosion of aluminium by using an example of a corrosion failure of a joint in the automobile coolant circuit. A number of joint failures were studied to understand the corrosion pattern and for various metallurgical aspects like chemistry, hardness and microstructure. The corrosion products were analyzed using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS). This analysis indicated that the corrosion products mostly contained Aluminium Oxides with other contaminants like chlorides. The studies revealed that the clamped joint of the aluminium part and rubber hose led to the formation of a crevice with the engine coolant acting as the corrosive medium. The corrosion behavior at the location was affected by environmental factors like temperature, pH and chloride contamination.