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Adaption of EV powertrains in existing vehicle architecture has created many unique challenges in meeting performance, reliability, safety, ease of manufacturing & serviceability at optimum cost. Mounting of large size battery packs in existing vehicle architecture is one of them. Specific energy & the energy density of Lithium ion batteries are very lower compared to Diesel & Petrol, which requires high volume & weight for equivalent energy storage. For movement of many passengers and to ensure sufficient range EV buses typically needs large amount of energy and for storage of same bigger size battery packs are required. These large size batteries directly affect vehicle architecture, seating layout, ease of assembly & serviceability. Moreover the heavy mass of batteries directly influences vehicle dynamics & performance characteristics such as vehicle handling, roll & NVH. The most important consideration in design of EV vehicles in general and buses in specific is safety.

A bus is integral part of public transportation in both rural and urban areas. It is also used for scheduled transport, tourism, and school transport. Buses are the common mode of transport all over the world. The growth in economy, the electrification of public transport, demand in shared transport, etc., is leading to a surge in the demand for buses and accelerating the overall growth of the bus industry. With the increased number of buses, the issue of safety of passengers and the crew assumes special importance. The comfort of driver and passenger in the vehicle involves the vibration performance and therefore, the structural integrity of buses is critically important. Bus safety act depicts the safety and comfort of bus operations, management of safety risks, continuous improvement in bus safety management, public confidence in the safety of bus transport, appropriate stakeholder involvement and the existence of a safety culture among bus service providers.

The automotive world is rapidly moving towards achieving shorter lead time using high-end technological solutions by keeping up with day-to-day advancements in virtual testing domain. With increasing fidelity requirements in test cases and shorter project lead time, the virtual testing is an inevitable solution. This paper illustrates method adopted to achieve best approximation to emulate driver behavior with 1-D (one dimensional) simulation based modeling approach. On one hand, the physical testing needs huge data collection of various parameters using sensors mounted on the vehicle. The vehicle running on road provides the real time data to derive durability test specifications. One such example includes developing duty cycle for powertrain durability testing using Road Torque Data Collection (RTDC) technique. This involves intense physical efforts, higher set-up cost, frequent iterations, vulnerability to manual errors and causing longer test lead-time.

Global concerns over availability and environmental impact of conventional fuels in recent years have resulted in evolution of Electric Vehicles. Research and development focus has shifted towards one of its main components, Lithium-ion battery. Development of high performing, long lasting batteries within challenging timelines is the need of the industry. Lithium-ion batteries undergo “battery ageing”, limiting its energy storage and power output, affecting the EV performance, cost & life span. It is critical to be able to predict the rate of battery ageing & the impact of different environmental conditions on battery lifetime/capacity. Conventionally, extensive physical vehicle level testing is carried out on batteries to map the battery capacity in various conditions. This is a lengthy & expensive process affecting the product development cycle, paving the way for an alternative process.

With India achieving the BSVI milestone, the diesel particulate filter (DPF) has become an imperative component of a modern diesel engine. A DPF system is a device designed to trap soot from exhaust gas of the diesel engine and demands periodic regeneration events to oxidize the accumulated soot particles. The regeneration event is triggered either based on the soot mass limit of the filter or the delta pressure across it. For a Heavy Duty Diesel Engine (HDDE), pressure difference across the DPF is not usually reliable as the size of the DPF is large enough compared to the DPF used ina passenger vehicle diesel engine. Also, the pressure difference across DPF is a function of exhaust mass flow and thus it makes it difficult to make an accurate call for active regeneration. This demands for a very accurate soot estimation model and it plays a vital role in a successful regeneration event.

Error in suspension asymmetry or tire parameters may lead to vehicle drifting laterally from its intended straight-line path, which is called vehicle pull. Driver then needs to apply constant steering correction to maintain the vehicle in straight line which will lead to high driver fatigue and deteriorate driving experience. Manufacturing a perfectly symmetric suspension system is impractical, however an insight into the manufacturing tolerances of suspension system at the early design stage can be extremely useful. Also tire force and moment parameters at straight line operation and its maximum allowable variations will help in defining the tire parameter specifications and tolerances. The objective of this study was to develop a 1D model of suspension and tire system which can predict the torque experienced in steering and drift of the vehicle from straight line due to the tire force and moment and asymmetric suspension geometry.

The basic function of steering system is to control the direction of the vehicle. The driver applies effort on the steering wheel and receives feedback through the steering system as a result of tire to road interaction. This feedback consists of a haptic (force) feedback which is directly felt by the driver and it is termed as steering feel. Precise steering feel gives better driving experience and is decisive factor for customer to buy a vehicle as well as for OEMs in building brand image. Along with steering parameters, suspension and tire parameters also has significant impact on steering feel. In past, modelling of the steering system was done at component level or with simplified vehicle system. Such approaches had not given accurate results of steering feel metric and resulted in incorrect steering design parameter selection. In order to replicate actual vehicle characteristics, complex and detailed modelling of steering, tire and suspension subsystems is necessary.

The automotive world has seen an increase in customer demands for vehicles having low noise and vibrations. One of the most important source of noise and vibrations associated with vehicles is the vibration of driveline systems. For commercial vehicles, the refinement of drivelines from NVH point of view is complex due to the cost and efficiency constraints. The typical rear wheel drive configuration of commercial vehicles mostly amplifies the torsional vibrations produced by engine which results into higher noise in the vehicle operating speed range. Theoretically, there are various options available for fine tuning the torsional vibration performance of the vehicle drive train. The mass moments of inertia and stiffness of the drivetrain components play significant role in torsional vibration damping, however, except minor changes to flywheel mass, it is hardly possible to change other components, subject to design limitations.

Vehicle dynamics is one of the most important vehicle attributes. It is classified into three domains, the longitudinal, vertical, and lateral dynamics. This paper focuses on optimizing the lateral vehicle dynamics which is driven by the straight ahead controllability and cornering controllability of the vehicle. One of the important parameters that dictates these sub-attributes is the steering ratio. Therefore, designing the right steering ratio is critical to meet the vehicle “specific” targets. Significant amount of work has been done by many researchers on variable steering ratio by implementing variable gear ratio (VGR) rack, active steering, and steer-by-wire systems. This paper discusses the methodology and considerations to optimize the steering ratio for a constant gear ratio rack by optimizing the steering column layout, viz., orientation and the phase angle in universal joints.

In case of design of passenger vehicles, one of the priorities is how the dynamics behavior shall be perceived by the vehicle occupants. One of many such handling parameters is the vehicle body roll, which is usually quantified by the vehicle's Steady State Roll Gradient. This number gives an indication of the rotation of the vehicle body in response to unit lateral force acting on the vehicle, as in the case of cornering. However it does not necessarily indicate the roll as sensed by a person seated inside it. A study showed that the subjective feel is not entirely dependent on roll gradient. In some cases the occupant may feel more confident and comfortable in a vehicle with a relatively higher roll gradient, or vice versa. In such cases, designing for roll gradient alone may not serve the purpose of secure and comfortable feel. To account for this discrepancy, a study was carried out to quantify the motion felt by the occupant.

Shock tube is used to simulate blast loading conditions on materials for studying the failure behavior of different materials under blast pressures on smaller scale. This paper describes CAE method developed for simulating shock tube experiment in LS-DYNA3D environment. The objective of shock tube simulation is to characterize material failure parameters so as to predict risk of material failure in full vehicle blast simulations while developing vehicle for blast protection applications. The paper describes modeling of shock wave and its interaction with test specimen in shock tube environment. Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) techniques are applied to simulate shock tube experiment in LS-DYNA3D and simulation predictions are compared with experimental test data. CAE correlation studies were carried out with respect to incident and reflected pressures in shock tube, deformation and plastic strains on test specimen, shock wave velocity etc.

With the current state of ever rising fuel prices and unavailability of affordable alternate technologies, significant research and development efforts have been invested in recent times towards improving fuel efficiency of vehicles powered with conventional internal combustion engines. To achieve this, a varied approach has been adopted by researchers to cover the entire energy chain including fuel quality, combustion quality, power generation efficiency, down-sizing, power consumption efficiency, etc. Apart from energy generation, distribution and consumption, another domain that has been subjected to significant scrutiny is energy recuperation or recovery. A moving vehicle and a running engine provide a number of opportunities for useful back-recovery and storage of energy. The most significant sources for recuperation are the kinetic energy of the moving vehicle or running engine and to a lesser extent the thermal energy from medium such as exhaust gas.

There has to be a good co-relation/ relationship between the pedal effort applied, pedal travel, deceleration level achieved and stopping distance for “good brake feel”. Brake feel also depend upon the time lag between the force applied on brake pedal and the response of braking system. Hence “brake feel” can be improved by reducing the response time of the brake system. Many vehicles are having “poor brake feel” complaints, pertaining to the above mentioned reasons. This paper relates to an improved brake system for automobile in which reduction in reaction time was done by artificially increasing differential pressure head across vacuum booster diaphragm. Brake booster is given an input of compressed air to the valve body during actuation, thereby increasing the differential pressure across the diaphragm. The compressed air is bled from turbocharger-intercooler of the vehicle which is stored in a reservoir, with one way valve, while cruising.

Diesel engines tend to operate on lower exhaust temperatures, compared to their gasoline counterparts. Exhaust emission control becomes a significant issue at these lower temperatures, as any catalytic converter needs certain light off temperature to commence functioning. The trend so far has been to move the catalytic converters closer to the exhaust manifold, in order to get the benefit of higher temperatures - but most of the applications are limited to the location available after the turbo chargers. This is due the fact that very minute and efficient catalyst is required, if it has to be placed before the turbo charger. This catalyst also needs to be extremely durable to take care of high exotherms which occur within the catalysts and also to prevent any possible damage to the turbo chargers.

For an automotive exhaust system, noise level and back pressure are the most important parameters for passenger comfort and engine performance respectively. The sound quality perception of the existing silencer design was unacceptable, although the back pressure measured was below the target limit. To improve the existing design, few concepts were prepared by changing the internal elements of silencer only. The design constraints were the silencer shell dimensions, volume of silencer, inlet pipe and outlet tailpipe positions, which had to be kept same as that of the existing base design. The sound quality signal replaying and synthesizing was performed to define the desired sound quality. The numerical simulation involves 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with appropriate boundary condition having less numerical diffusions to predict the back pressure. The various silencer concepts developed with this preliminary analysis, was then experimentally verified with the numerical data.

In the commercial vehicle business, Tractor-trailer combination vehicles are mostly used for carrying heavy loads for longer distances. To improve operating economy of the vehicle by reducing turn around time, it becomes a necessity to have a better driving comfort level for the vehicles. In a Tractor-trailer combination vehicle, due to point load acting on the tractor, pitching effect on the cab is very dominant. To overcome this pitching effect, a fully suspended cabin (suspended at four points) has been designed in order to have better ride comfort as compared to the fixed cabin. This paper discusses some of the measures taken to reduce the overall cabin pitching effect on Tractor -trailer combination vehicles.

Reduction of NOx (Oxides of Nitrogen) and particulates from engine exhaust is one of the prime considerations in current research and development in automotive industry. The present paper describes the combustion optimization done on a four cylinder, 4 liter DI diesel engine to meet stringent Euro-III emission norms. The engine FIE (Fuel Injection Equipment) and injector geometry was optimized for performance and emission. Smoke measurements were considered as indicative of soot, to predict particulate emissions. This was done to simplify the overall process and save development time. It was concluded that by combining the flexibility of electronically controlled fuel injection begin, with improved nozzle technologies, with higher spray velocities and spray penetration, a considerable reduction in NOx and particulate emissions can be achieved. This can serve as a low cost solution, without any exhaust after-treatment systems.