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Electric Vehicles are rapidly growing in the market yet various failure incidents were noted all along the globe. On the other hand, range anxiety has greatly inspired manufacturers to explore new practices to improve. One of the most important components of an EV is the battery, which converts chemical energy to electrical energy thereby liberating heat energy as the loss. This heat loss when high, capability of system to deliver required energy to wheels is reduced significantly. With a higher heat loss in the battery, system is prone to failure or reduced mileage. Therefore, controlling/maintaining system temperature under safe usable zone even during harsh conditions is ideal. Simple reduction in energy consumption of electrical cooling/heating devices used with regenerative energy techniques can greatly help in range improvement. The intention of this paper is to explore easy methods to improve electric vehicle range in different ambient conditions.

In order to meet stringent emission targets and to achieve better fuel efficiency, closed loop air mass control strategies have become essential across all vehicle segments. Closed loop air mass control mandates measuring fresh air mass entering the engine combustion chamber. However, in Naturally Aspirated (NA) engines, while measuring air mass using conventional methods such as Hot Film Air mass (HFM) sensor, heavy pulsations in the Air-intake results in errors which would impact closed loop air mass control and lead to inconsistencies in emissions. To address this issue, we studied different approaches using HFM sensor with Resonator, differential pressure sensor across the intake air filter and Lambda based air mass control. Based on this empirical study we found that modelling air mass with differential pressure sensor using Bernoulli’s principle (Flow rate ∝ √Differential pressure) results in higher accuracies compared to conventional methods.

Powertrain complexity rapidly increasing to meet fast moving regulation requirements. The BS6 Phase-1 regulation norms were implemented in India from April 1, 2020 and replaced the previous BS4 norms. Phase-2 of the BS6 regulation norms were came into effect on April 1, 2023. To meet this stringent regulation requirement, need effective performance of after treatment systems like DOC, DPF and SCR demands critical hardware selection and implementation. A robust DeNOx emissions strategy is developed in naturally aspirated single cylinder LCV application to meet cycle emissions, real drive emissions and OBD requirements. Naturally aspirated single cylinder engine has its own challenges to meet BS6 norms like higher engine out NOx, dynamic temperature profiles etc. It is always a challenge to adapt EATS in LCV application as these are low-cost vehicles. EATS components and sensors impacts the overall cost of the vehicle.

In Hydrogen internal combustion engines (H2ICE), the hydrogen is stored and operated at very low temperature before it enters the combustion chamber. The effect of hydrogen on steel materials is detrimental because of hydrogen embrittlement. Forged steel parts are used in engine specifically crankshafts, connecting rods, camshafts, and pistons. The objective of the work is to analyze the effect of low temperature i.e. 35 °C to -60 °C on three types of forged steel materials i.e. 40Cr4, 42CrMo4 and EN8 and assess any potential changes in their properties due to ductile brittle transition. The ductile to brittle transition charpy impact test is widely used to determine the temperature at which a material shifts from exhibiting ductile behavior to brittle behavior. This transition is critical for understanding the safety and reliability of steel components, as brittle fracture can lead to catastrophic failures.

The need for effective control systems is exacerbated by tighter pollution regulations. Also, there is growing demand for highly efficiently vehicles especially in the passenger segment. The air flow estimation of engine and accordingly controlling the fuel quantity removes many lacunas of the modern gasoline engines. The hot wire type mass air flow sensor is commonly used for air flow measurement, and is generally mounted in clean side piping to prevent damage to air mass flow sensor. The right estimation of air flow is possible by getting uniform flow over the different engine operating speed and load conditions. The placement of air flow sensor becomes critical considering the engine layout and packaging constraints and meeting the sensor mounting requirements. The deviation in mounting of air flow sensor will lead to consequential impact on engine performance and emissions.

Transmission adapter is solid, located on cylinder block , on which sits the transmission housing. The function of a flexplate is to provide a mounting point for a torque converter which is used to couple the engine and transmission together when an automatic transmission is used. Transmission adapter provide access for torque convertor and flexplate assembly and protect the flexplate from external environment. Transmission adapter is also support and locate the starter. This study deals with different alloy grade material use, improvement in process to reduce porosity. Porosity observed in first samples of the proposed grade material. The study represents investigation of Transmission adaptor porosity root cause. This also included visual observation, radiography -X ray testing , analysis,3D scan, dimensional inspection, chemical analysis and comparison, tensile testing, truck testing validation tasks.

Exhaust manifold in engine is used to transfer the hot exhaust gas from cylinder head to the turbocharger with minimum pressure loss and to support the turbocharger assembly. This puts manifold under intense thermal and mechanical loading and makes the design very complex. While designing the manifold, resonance of the system must be avoided, and thermo-mechanical fatigue life expectations must be met. Different engine applications would call for multiple turbocharger configuration and orientations to be considered in the design layout for system level resonance assessment. This paper talks about the failure investigation of the manifold which was designed for High mount rear out (HMRO) turbo orientation and then used with high mount front out (HMFO) layout in road miller application resulted into the manifold failures.

Studies have shown that good driving alone can improve the energy efficiency of the vehicle by 30-40%, reduce accidents by 20% and reduce maintenance costs by 25%. Thus, providing feedback about driving behavior can help drivers optimize their driving habits enabling them to reduce the total cost of vehicle ownership while also increasing their safety. To solve this, we have built Drive GPT, an AI-based generative pre-trained transformer model, trained using 90 million data points from 100 vehicles driven across 8 cities within India over 6 months. The model has learned to generate good driving behavior under various road, traffic, weather, and vehicle conditions. Its architecture is based on a transformer network, which allows it to efficiently process sequences of driving steps. To make this a generic model and reduce bias, drives from across the cities and fleets have been oversampled and balanced to generate a representative driving behavior database on which the model is trained.

With the increasing focus on reducing CO2 emissions to combat global warming and climate change, the automotive industry is exploring near zero-emission alternative fuels to replace traditional fossil-based fuels like diesel, gasoline, and CNG. Methanol is a promising alternative fuel that is being evaluated in India due to its easy transportation and storage, as well as its production scalability and availability potential. This study focuses on the retro-fitment solution of M100 (pure methanol) SI port-fuel injection (PFI) mode of combustion. A heavy duty single-cylinder engine test setup was used to assess methanol SI combustion characteristic. Lean operation strategy has been investigated. At lean mixture conditions a significant drop in NOX and CO emissions was achieved. The fuel injection techniques and the impact of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) on the conventional stoichiometric combustion process is highlighted.

Enhanced impeller blade design for water coolant pump in IC engines Sudeshna Roy Pratihar, Amol Barve, Onkar Mokashi, Naveen Patil Mercedes-Benz Research & Development India Private Ltd, India. Keywords: Turbulence; hydraulic efficiency; friction loss; computational fluid dynamics; tubercles Abstract: This paper illustrates scope for improvement in water pump hydraulic efficiency by proposing novel design of impeller blade for internal combustion engine. For water pump, hydraulic efficiency is directly proportional to fluid drag imposed on impeller blades. Friction loss & turbulence during typical operating conditions needs to considered, by keeping in mind optimum performance of water pump. Increase in drag losses results in higher power consumption of water pump. Considerable literature study indicates that, tubercles design in area of IC Engines more precisely in topics relevant to water pump design has never tested for Automotive application.

Closed crankcase ventilation prevent harmful gases from entering atmosphere thereby reducing hydrocarbon emissions. Ventilation system carries blowby gases leaking through combustion process along with oil mist to Engine intake system. Major sources of blowby often occurs from leak in combustion chamber through piston rings, leaks from turbo shafts & valve guides. Oil mist carried away by blowby gases gets separated using filtration media. Fleece type separation media has high separation efficiency for particles above 10 microns. Efficiency drops if mist particle is below 10-micron size. Low size aerosol mist generally forms due to flash boiling on piston under crown area and on shafts of turbo charger due to high speeds combined with elevated oil temperatures. High power density diesel engine is taken for our study. It produces low particle size oil mist which contributes to aerosol emission of 3 gm/hr when operated at rated speed.

In farm tractors, the available drawbar power and Power Take-Off (PTO) power are generally lower than the engine power due to parasitic losses. These losses are caused by engine-driven auxiliary loads such as cooling fans, hydraulic pumps for power steering, alternators, etc. Minimizing these parasitic losses can increase the available drawbar power and PTO power, resulting in direct fuel savings by reducing fuel consumption. The continuous increase in fuel costs and the environmental impact of emitted gases from burned fuel into the atmosphere have necessitated the replacement of hydraulic power steering and mechanical fans with electric power steering (EPS) and electric fans, respectively, to improve efficiency. The existing battery has been replaced with a higher capacity battery to provide power to the electric fan, electric power steering, and other electrical components.

Tractor usage is growing due to introduction of wide range of implements and applications. Tractor plays a major role in Agri and Construction applications. Due to the environmental factors, restrictions are set on the tractor emissions. This brings new challenge in the tactor industry to reduce the carbon footprint. By reducing the weight of the tractor, Co2 emissions can be reduced. Many of the components in the Hydraulic systems are made of metal casting. Conventional casting process involves preparation of die & mold, material removal at unwanted regions, machining in the final stage to get the desired final product. Contrary to conventional manufacturing process, Additive Manufacturing process is a transformative approach to industrial production that enables creation of lighter and stronger parts. The process involves creation of 3D component by adding material layer by layer.

An Automotive vehicle is subjected to run in various ambient conditions at different load conditions. For an SUV with off roading capability, it becomes more important to size the Cooling module for optimal performance. The heat exchangers like AC condenser and Radiator dimensions defines the heat rejection capacity suitable for the respective powertrain configuration of a vehicle. Subsequently the Air flown over the heat exchangers will be dependent on the vehicle speed. However, being an SUV with Off roading capability, the need arises to simulate the combination of various speed ranges in addition to that there are different loading conditions. Considering the various conditions, the ram air required for efficient cooling should be adequate for the heat exchangers to attain optimal performance. Hence, Radiator & Fan motor sizing plays an important role in the Powertrain as well as Cabin cooling performance.

The increasing demand for higher specific power, fuel economy, Operating Costs as well as meeting global emission norms have become the driving factors of today’s product development in the automotive market today. Substitution of high-density materials and more precise adjustment of material parameters help in significant weight decrease, but it is accompanied by undesirable cost increase and manufacturing complexity. This becomes a challenge for every automotive engineer to balance the above parameters to make a highly competitive design. This work is a part of the Design and Development of 2.2 L, 4 Cylinder TCIC Diesel Engine for a complete new monocoque vehicle platform, focused on automotive passenger car application. This paper explains the selection of a suitable cylinder head gasket technology for a lightweight engine that acts as a sealing interface between the cylinder block and cylinder head.

Engine mount is an integral part of any Internal Combustion engine. It is the medium which isolates the vibrations coming from engine being transferred to the chassis or body of vehicle. Engine or power plant is the main source of unbalanced vibrations. The major role of an engine mount is to minimize those vibration levels, improve ride comfort and increase the life of an engine and its accessories. Most of the OEM’s are validating the engine mounts in virtual environment as FEA analysis software. In this paper detailed procedure of testing of Engine mount at system level is presented. This work determines the development of test procedure for passenger car engine mounts in the Laboratory by using Multi-axial environment which also explains the details of truly Multi-axial test rig development, Drive file creation and Durability Testing with the maintained vehicle conditions by simulating the field conditions in the laboratory. Results of simulation and durability also enclosed.

Predicting engine failure upfront to prevent major damages is a challenging task. But with the data available from the ECU (engine control unit) transmitted live via the telematics unit provides a data base to predict the health of engine and its major sub system. Through proper data analytics using the logics arrived based on previous / tested data the possibility of failure occurrence and the corrective action required to avoid the same can be indicated. This paper aims at an application with Modelled data analytics to analyze the live parameter data and apply predefined logics to predict engine / sub system level health and possible occurrence of a failure. Vehicle data was used to predict the engine / sub system failures. Application using PHYTON was developed to evaluate the severity of application duty cycle on engine and also to evaluate the health of major sub system.

Optimization of Cooling Airflow for improved Heat Dissipation through Radiator Authors: Paurnima Thakur, Amit Aher, Vishal Chavan, Chandrakant Palve Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India Private Limited Key Words: Radiator, Temperature, Heat Dissipation, Airflow, Cooling, Thermal Efficiency Abstract: Heat regulation is indispensable factor during operation of internal combustion engine. Automotive engine cooling system takes care of excess heat produced during engine operation. It regulates Engine surface temperature for engine optimum efficiency and plays important role in meeting CO2 emission target set by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Insufficient heat dissipation results into Engine overheating. This will affects thermal efficiency & ultimately brake specific fuel consumption of the Internal Combustion Engine. Radiator is the central component of a vehicle cooling system to monitor and regulate engine temperature and prevent it from overheating.

Optimizing weight, cost and friction is critically focused in most modern powertrains. Lesser components in drive trains makes the systems` lightweight and more efficient. This paper explains the idea of integrating a fuel pump and a vacuum pump drive system on to the main camshaft eliminating many rotating & static parts in a two valve per cylinder push-rod type actuated 4-cylinder diesel engine, thereby reducing overall weight, cost and drive losses. The modified camshaft will now drive oil pump, vacuum pump, fuel pump and valve train together. The existing camshaft is extended with a slot at one end and a three lobed cam made of higher grade material is press fitted on to the said portion with an additional journal bearing face added. Proposed camshaft design is evaluated for handling higher power transmission considering multiple drives are connected.

With the increase in the number of automobiles, there is a very strong emphasis on reducing the CO2 pollution which led to evolution of miller cycle engines. However, the inherent characteristic of Miller engine is the lower volumetric efficiency when compared to otto engines because of which small turbo chargers with variable geometry turbines are used to induct air into the engine. With miller engine and VGT turbo charger combination arises the challenges of charge controllability because of lower inertia and reduced vane control area. With conventional turbo charger control methods, the response time is slow thereby leading to turbo lag or sever over boosting, this is overcome by accurate engine modelling and using the same as input for charger control.