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Assessment of cooling performance in the design stage of vehicle allows a reduction in the number of needed prototypes and reduces the overall design cycle time. Frontend cooling and thermal management play an essential role in the early stages of commercial vehicle design. Sufficient airflow needs to be available for adequate cooling of the under-hood components. The amount of air mass flow depends on the under-hood geometry details, positioning and size of the grilles, fan operation and the positioning of the other components. Thermal performance depends on the selection of heat exchanger. This paper describes the effects of several design actions on engine cooling performance of a commercial vehicle with the help of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation tool Fluent™. Front of vehicle design is captured in detailed FE model, considering front bumper, grille, cabin, cargo and surrounding under-hood and underbody components.

In today's competitive world, vehicle with light weighting is the most focused area. Vehicle light weighting can be done either by using light weight materials or by reducing the size of the existing components. In present paper later approach of vehicle light weighting is followed. It will help in design lay outing and reduce weight will add benefit to Fuel Efficiency (FE) too. Scope for light weighting is identified in exhaust system where muffler volume is optimized using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) commercial tool FLUENT™. The back pressure, exhaust gas temperature, sound noise level & sound quality are chosen as design verification parameters. The muffler volume is reduced by 14.1%; resultant system become 14.1% compact with 2% lighter weight. Initially CFD analysis is performed on existing muffler and correlated with available test results. Accordingly parameters like pressure drop and flow induced noise are set as target values for new design.

Market driven competition in global trade and urgency for controlling the atmospheric air pollution are the twin forces, which have urged Indian automobile industries to catch up with the international emission norms. Improvement in the fuel efficiency of the vehicles is one way to bind to these stringent norms. It is experimentally proven that almost 40% of the available useful engine power is being consumed to overcome the drag resistance and around 45% to overcome the tire rolling resistance of the vehicle. This as evidence provides a huge scope to investigate the influence of aerodynamic drag and rolling resistances on the fuel consumption of a commercial vehicle. The present work is a numerical study on the influence of aerodynamic drag resistance on the fuel consumption of a commercial passenger bus. The commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool FLUENT™ is used as a virtual analysis tool to estimate the drag coefficient of the bus.

The main emphasis for a commercial vehicle design which was focused on fuel-economy and durability does not fulfill the increasing customer expectations anymore. Commercial vehicle designers need to focus on other vehicle aspects such as steering, ride comfort, NVH, braking, ergonomics and aesthetics in order to provide car like perception to truck, bus drivers and passengers during long distance drives. Powertrain mounting system must perform many functions. First and foremost, the mounting system must maintain & control the overall motion of the powertrain, to restrict its envelope reasonably, thereby avoiding damage to any vehicle component from the potential impact. This requires the mount to be stiff. Second the mount must provide good vibration isolation to have a comfortable ride to the vehicle occupant. This requires the mount to be soft.