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The logistics process in Brazil and the world represents a significant portion of the cost of manufactured products, either for export or import. The availability of technologies that make the logistic process more efficient directly affects the product’s transportation productivity and makes them more competitive. This paper presents a telemetry model of commercial vehicles integrated with harvest machines in agriculture operations, allowing accurate scheduling of loading and unloading processes at the field. In this study, we introduce a conceptual model of a technological matrix, where the shared topologies of vehicle information processing help predict failures, identification of wear of vehicle and machine’s components. The opportunity is demonstrated to collect data from agricultural machines and combine them with data extracted from trucks. The sharing of information on farm machinery and trucks in real-time establishes an essential change in crop management in the field.

Mandatory policies have played an important role for the automakers develop better projects in terms of safety and fuel efficiency; while customers of commercial vehicles are mainly interested in lowering the Total Cost Ownership (TCO). A common factor among these requirements is the driving performance, which is influenced by external sources. A lot of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and tech companies are launching driving feedback systems that look over all of the data from the vehicle, driver and road in order to generate outputs to improve driver behavior. Understanding human machine interface (HMI) and applying Behaviorism concepts to the analysis of these systems, this paper is aimed to discuss how different driver coaching systems work. Overall, the main result is the changes in decision making outcomes about driving styles through enhancing awareness.

The several problems and bottlenecks faced users public transport users in big cities are a common knowledge. Among them agencies responsible for public transport recognize the lack of centralized control, the under and over supply, the lack of information to users and the non-compliance of scheduled trips. In order to work identified problems improving cities like Recife and São Paulo are testing systems named as embedded technology that integrate the use of GPS, cameras, centralized monitoring among others, retarding a deeper coverage compared to systems previously used. The main objectives are the comfort and safety increase of users and the freight logistics improvement. This paper presents the technologies being tested in Brazil through successful models applied in countries as Spain and Colombia, as well as the scope of bids and proposals for improvement of public transport.

With the purpose of minimizing the gaseous emissions impacts on the metropolitan areas, many alternative fuel resources has been developed as alternatives to fossil fuels. An environmentally and economical interesting alternative for the Brazilian market is the diesel made from sugar cane (Farnesene - C15H32). The Farnesene, made by sugar cane juice fermentation in presence of a genetically modified yeast is basically a saturated hydrocarbon molecule (C15H32) with more than 98% purity and that presents properties comparable to fossil diesel and when used in regular diesel cycle engines can bring significantly reductions not only in soot levels (Particulate Matter - PM) but also on the Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), unlike the biodiesel, that is well known that it brings increases on NOx emission level due its physic-chemical properties. Reduction on CO2 levels on life cycle is another important benefit of using such fuel since it's made by renewable feedstock.

The growing necessity for less carbon emission vehicles due to environmental issues and more rigid legislation rules encourages many automotive companies to develop low CO2 emission engines. This motivation leads Mercedes-Benz do Brazil to the development of a “dual-fuel” diesel engine for buses that works with diesel and CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) fuel. One of the challenges for the development of this kind of engine is the electric/electronic integration between the diesel engine ECU (Electronic Control Units) and the CNG system ECU that coordinates the engine gas injectors.

With the discovery of oil and gas in the pre-salt Santos and Campos basin, the supply of natural gas (NG) is expected to increase considerably, so the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) in city buses will be an important option for reducing the overall consumption of fossil diesel fuel and a reduction in operating costs in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Areas in Brazil. A vehicle with an engine that can run on pure diesel or diesel and CNG has advantage over a vehicle that works exclusively with CNG, because when there is no availability or the lack of CNG, the vehicle / engine operates with diesel only. Another benefit of this technology is the resale value in Brazil, because after the life cycle of use in theses two big cities, Urban Buses are sold country side to small cities where CNG is not available.

New demands for the European Market claimed a new medium duty truck. Aim was not only to comply with new legislations, but also achieve better driving comfort and dynamic characteristics. The development of a new cab suspension was the answer given by means of an international project executed by the Technology Development Center of Mercedes-Benz do Brasil (CDT) with support of other technical divisions of our Development Center in Germany. High-level Teamwork Brazil/Germany at all levels from project coordination down to the plant assembly line was the key to reach an outstanding result with an extra achievement of weight reduction. Complete integration of all involved collaborators in Brazil and in Germany proved to be the main reason to get at the high efficiency shown during the development tasks. This article presents a brief overview of the undertaken development steps together with the challenges and the solutions given to assure the success of the international teamwork.

With focus on reducing the Green House Gases emissions, the use of biodiesel as an alternative fuel, in special for buses that runs on the Brazilian metropolitan areas has been even higher. Additionally, with the introduction of the new legislation for diesel engines in 2012, CONAMA PROCONVE P7, that in order to attempt to its requirements uses different kinds of exhaust gases after treatment systems, the necessity of knowing the behavior of those “P7 engines” operating with different biodiesel contents on blends with regular fossil fuel or even pure biodiesel has been an important issue to ensure the benefits of using such alternative fuel. On this evaluation, blends of 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 75% and 100% of biodiesel content in ANP65/2011 A_S50 Diesel Fuel (50ppm Sulfur content) was experimented in a Mercedes-Benz OM926LA E5 engine with SCR (Selective Catalyst Reaction) exhaust gases after treatment system.

The study is carried out through numerical and experimental methods. The finite element method is used to simulate the support mechanical behavior via modal analysis, and for the evaluation of stress concentration regions through pressure and thermoelastic static analyses, and dynamic analysis. The fatigue life is calculated for the presented stresses. Stress, acceleration and temperature data were obtained through dynamic test. For material evaluation, chemical analysis, hardness and metallographic analysis were carried out. For thoroughness, a failed support fractography will be presented. The objective of this study is to correlate the data obtained by numerical method with experimental data, and as a result, the support failure mechanism was identified. A modified support is presented to avoid the failure for the determined loads. The support within the proposed modifications reduces the current maximum stress in 41% and improved the fatigue life in 4.99e5 cycles.

Because of the increasing need to reduce the time of development of new products, or even to evaluate the reliability of products, one has been noticing a trend to rationalize field tests through essays in ever more representative test benches, within a shorter period of time at a lower cost. In the automotive industry, the trend is to increase the reliability of tests in benches. The quantity of simulated parameters is increasing, what demands an ever increasing survey of data based on measurements of signals of deformation of leaves of spring leaf and courses of suspension in experimental vehicles.

This work reports the first stage in the experimental optimization of a medium duty truck, equipped with a new engine, with four cylinders and high power, concerning both the noise emission for the environment and the noise level in the passengers' compartment. In the first stage of this work, comparative measurements among the noise levels for vehicles in different configurations were made, in order to identify the most important sources in the vehicle's noise level, as well as to serve as indicative for project improvements. Each system configuration was analyzed separately, in order to obtain a comparative evaluation of the different vehicle configurations along the whole period of measurements.