Search Results

In the context of vehicular safety and performance, brake pads represent a critical component, ensuring controlled driving and accident prevention. These pads consist of friction materials that naturally degrade with usage, potentially leading to safety issues like delayed braking response and NVH disturbances. Unfortunately, assessing brake pad wear remains challenging for vehicle owners, as these components are typically inaccessible from the outside. Moreover, Indian OEMs have not yet integrated brake pad life estimation features. This research introduces a hybrid machine learning approach for predicting brake pad remaining useful life, comprising three modules: a weight module, utilizing mathematical formulations based on longitudinal vehicle dynamics to estimate vehicle weight necessary for calculating braking kinetic energy dissipation; and temperature and wear modules, employing deep neural networks for predictive modeling.

The commercial vehicle sector (especially trucks) has major role in economic growth of a nation. With improving infrastructure, increasing number of commercial vehicles and growing amount of Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) on roads, accidents are also increasing. As per RASSI (Road Accident Sampling System India) FY2016-21 database, commercial vehicles are involved in 43% of total accidents on Indian roads. One of the major causes of these accidents is Driver Drowsiness and Inattention (DDI) (approx. 10% contribution in total accidents). This paper describes novel driver-in-loop performance assessment methodology for comprehensive verification of Driver Monitoring System (DMS) for commercial vehicle application. Novelty lies in specification of test subjects, driving styles and variety of road traffic scenarios for verification of DMS system. Test setup is made modular to cater to different platform environments (Heavy, Intermediate, Light) with minor modifications.

The automotive world is moving towards electric powertrain systems. The electric powertrain systems have emerged as a promising alternative to the conventional powertrain system. The performance of electric vehicle is highly dependent on operating temperature of electric and electronic components of the vehicle. All power electronics and electric components in EV generate heat during operation and it must be removed to prevent overheating of components. Higher temperatures raise safety concerns whereas lower temperatures deteriorate the performance of power electronics & electric components. These power electronics & electrical components perform efficiently and safely if operated within certain temperature range. This paper presents an advanced efficient cost-effective thermal technique for small commercial electric vehicle (SCEV) to improve the performance & life of major electric components.

Electrical and Electronic systems in a vehicle are increasing manifolds with Electric and ADAS Vehicles taking the lead. There is a rapid transition happening from hardware driven vehicles to software driven vehicles. ISO 26262 is a global standard defined for functional safety (FuSa) in the automotive industry which addresses the structured design and development approach for eliminating electrical malfunctions leading to critical hazards such as fire in EVs. The standard defines specific requirements that need to be met by the safety relevant electrical system and also by development processes. Though the implementation of FuSa is crucial from vehicle safety point of view, its compliance is still a challenge majorly due to lack of awareness, in-built complexities, increase in project development time and subsequent cost. In this work, we focus on a FuSa implementation model taking into account the conventional new program development cycle.

Enriched ventilation and driver assistance systems which plays vital role in human thermal comfort and safety, are now necessities for the whole automotive sector. For faster cabin thermal comfort, air circulation around occupant’s body reveals higher cabin comfort index. In India natural and forced ventilation system is predominantly used in commercial vehicles as an economical solution for achieving interim cabin comfort over air conditioning system. Presently used forced ventilation system consist of electrically driven blower motor to remove stale air around human body which is adding alternator load and thus affects fuel economy. Remarkably, 22% of such auxiliary electrical load is taken by electrical components from engine generated power. In order to enhance cabin thermal comfort and conceivably reduce power usage, an effective air flow control system is need of hour.

Commercial electric vehicle air conditioning system keeps occupants comfortable, but at the expense of the energy used from the battery of vehicle. Passengers around the world are increasingly requesting buses with HVAC/AC capabilities. There is a need to optimise current air conditioning systems taking into account packaging, cost, and performance limits due to the rising demand for cooling and heating globally. Major elements contributing to heat ingress are traction motor, front firewall, windshield & side glasses and bus body parts. These elements contribute to the bus’s poor cooling and lack of passenger comfort. This topic refers to the reduction of the heat ingress through usage of different glass technology like IR Cut & solar green glass with different types of coating.

In the modern era of automotive industry, occupant comfort inside the cabin is a basic need and no more a luxury feature. With increase in number of vehicles, the expectations from customers are also changing. One of the major expectations from real world customers is quick cabin cooling thru all seasons, particularly when the vehicle is hot soaked and being used in summer conditions. Occupant thermal comfort inside the vehicle cabin is provisioned by a mobile air conditioning (MAC) system, which operates on a vapor compression-based cycle using a refrigerant. The main components of a direct expansion (DX) based MAC system are, a compressor, condenser, evaporator, and expansion valve. Conditioned air is circulated inside the cabin using a blower, duct system and air vents. The AC condenser is the most critical component in AC circuit as it rejects heat, thereby providing for a cooling effect inside the cabin.

AC system provides the human comfort inside the cabin of a vehicle but at the expense of consumption of energy from the vehicle. On a global perspective for the bus segment, there is an increased demand for cooling in tropical countries. Optimization needs to be done in existing AC systems w.r.t packaging, cost & performance constraints. Major elements contributing to heat ingress are engine hood, front firewall, windshield & side glasses and bus body parts. Due to these reasons inadequate passenger comfort and poor cool down performance of the vehicle is observed. This paper refers to the reduction of heat ingress through different DOE (Design of Experiment) in the area of design & validation for duct & vent layout, insulation, glass & paint technology, evaporator blowers. The new duct design has been evaluated using a CFD tool by varying various parameters to generate desired output. The integrated use of the modifications was found significant improvement at vehicle level.

Fuel cells plays significant role in the automotive sector to substitute the fossil fuels and complement to electric vehicles. In the fuel cell vehicles fuel cell stack is major component. It is important to have a robust fuel cell model that can simulate the behaviour of the fuel cell stack under various operating conditions in order to study the functioning of a fuel cell and optimize its operating parameters and achieve the best efficiency in operation. The operating voltage of the fuel cell at different current densities depends upon thermodynamic parameters like temperature and pressure of the reactants as well factors like the state of humidification of the electrolyte membrane. A 1D model is developed to capture the variation in voltage at different current densities due to internal losses and changes to operating conditions like temperature and pressure.

Nowadays automotive cabin comfort has become a necessity rather than an optional feature, with customers demanding more comfort features. Thermal comfort becomes an essential part of this expectation. Since steering wheel is the first surface that the driver will touch once he enters the vehicle, maintaining thermal comfort of steering wheel becomes important, especially in tropical countries like India where a car parked in hot weather can get significantly warm inside. In this work, two design concepts for automotive steering wheel thermal control based on thermoelectric effect are depicted along with a detailed mathematical model. Thermoelectric coolers were selected for this purpose as it is solid state, compact & scalable solution to achieve rapid cooling rates. This was the desired feature expected from an integration standpoint in automotive architecture.

Automotive suspension system forms the basis for the design of vehicle with durability, reliability, dynamics and NVH requirements. The automotive suspension systems are exposed to dynamic and static loads which in turn demands the highest integrity and performance against fatigue based metallic degradation. The current focus in automotive industry is to reduce the weight of the automotive parts and components without compromising with its static and dynamic mechanical properties. This weight reduction imparts fuel efficiency with added advantages. High-Strength Low Alloy steel (HSLA) offers optimum combination of ductility, monotonic and cyclic mechanical properties. Furthermore, welding processes offer design flexibility to achieve robust and lightweight designs with high strength steels.

Small commercial vehicles (SCVs) are the drivers of a major part of India’s indirect economy, providing the most efficient means of transport. With the introduction of BS-VI norms, some major overhauls have been done to the SCV models to meet BS VI norms in challenging timeline for early market entry. This forced to automotive designers towards challenge of cost competitiveness as well as refinement level to survive in this competitive market. This paper explains the systematic approach used to overcome challenges of higher tactile vibrations, higher in-cab noise because of BS VI requirement in 2 cycle engine required for small commercial vehicle. The solutions were need to be worked out without compromising the other performance attributes like total cost of ownership, fuel economy, ease of servicing and cost effectiveness.

Brake system design is intended to reduce vehicle speed in a very short time by ensuring vehicle safety. In the event of successive braking, brake system absorbs most of vehicle’s kinetic energy in the form of heat energy, at the same time it dissipates heat energy to the surrounding. During this short span of time, brake disc surface and rotor attains the highest temperatures which may cross their material allowable temperature limit or functional requirement. High temperatures on rotor disc affects durability & thermal reliability of the brake rotor. Excessive temperature on brake rotors can induce brake fade, disc coning which may result in reduced braking efficiency. To address the complex heat transfer and highly transient phenomenon during successive braking, numerical simulations can give more advantage than physical trials which helps to analyze complex 3D flow physics and heat dissipation from rotors in the vicinity of brake system.

Durability is an important indicator to measure the automobile quality and reliability. Automotive industry is striving to develop products having excellent performance to weight ratios and along with high safety standards. A successful product should have adequate robustness during normal customer operation and the ability to withstand high impact events without impairment of function or safety relevant damage. Road Load Data Acquisition (RLDA) along with efficient design and validation processes are, among others, critical factors for success in the automotive industry. Physical RLDA is expensive and time consuming, the prototype vehicles being costly and only available at a later stage in the vehicle development cycle. Component failures occurring on the proto test vehicles can prove to be a major setback, delaying the product launch by months. In order to overcome above challenge, this paper presents an innovative methodology to carry out Digital RLDA (dRLDA).

In a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) uniform reaction rate is very crucial to obtain maximum performance and to maintain the life of the cells. In PEMFC stack manifold plays an important role in maintaining uniform flow distribution of reactants (hydrogen, air and coolant) to the cells. Many studies have been carried out for examining the effect of manifold on flow distribution and pressure drop. Most studies are limited to small scale level (5 to 10 kW stack). This paper describes large scale fuel cell stack manifold design, flow distribution and pressured contours which is suitable for automotive vehicles (30 to 50 kW). The design consists of simplified scaled up fuel cell stack with cells connected in the series. Modelled the effect of internal manifold geometry of the fuel cell stack on pressure and flow distribution to the cells.

In previous work, AC Compressor Cycling (ACC) was modeled by incorporating evaporator thermal inertia in Mobile Air Conditioning (MAC) performance simulation. Prediction accuracy of >95% in average cabin air temperature has been achieved at moderate ambient condition, however the number of ACC events in 1D CAE simulation were higher as compared to physical test [1]. This paper documents the systematic approach followed to address the challenges in simulation model in order to bridge the gap between physical and digital. In physical phenomenon, during cabin cooldown, after meeting the set/ target cooling of a cabin, the ACC takes place. During ACC, gradual heat transfer takes place between cold evaporator surface and air flowing over it because of evaporator thermal inertia.

Nowadays, E- commerce and logistics business model is booming in India with road transport as a major mode of delivery system using containers. As competition in such business are on rise, different ways of improving profit margins are being continuously evolved. One such scenario is to look at reducing transportation cost while reducing fuel consumption. Traditionally, aero dynamics of commercial vehicles have never been in focus during their product development although literature shows major part of total fuel energy is consumed in overcoming aerodynamic drag at and above 60 kmph in case of large commercial vehicle. Hence improving vehicle exterior aerodynamic performance gives opportunity to reduce fuel consumption and thereby business profitability. Also byproduct of this improvement is reduced emissions and meeting regulatory requirements.

Polymers are substituting traditional materials, such as metals, in existing as well as new applications, both for structural and aesthetic applications as they are lightweight, customizable and are easy to mould into complex shapes. With such an extensive use of polymers, there is a need to carefully scrutinize their performance to ensure reliability. This is particularly the case in the automotive and electronic industries where the aesthetic appeal of their products is of prime concern and any visible scratch damage is undesirable. Concern for aesthetics has led to a need for the quantification of visibility due to scratch damage on polymeric surfaces Many painted plastic parts used in vehicles are being replaced with the molded-in color plastics for cost reduction and also due to environmental concerns associated with solvent emissions. There are multiple methods used for scratch evaluation of polymers and paints.

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.