Search Results

This paper discusses the development of an all speed governed diesel-natural gas dual fuel engine for agricultural farm tractor. A 45 hp, 2.9 liters diesel-natural gas dual fuel engine with a novel closed loop secondary fuel injection system was developed. A frugal approach without any modification of the base mechanical diesel fuel injection system was followed. This approach helped to minimize the cost impact, while meeting performance and emissions at par with neat diesel operation. Additional cost on gas injection system is redeemed by cost savings on diesel fuel. The dual fuel technology developed by Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., substitutes on an average approximately 40% of diesel with compressed natural gas, meeting the TREM III A emission norms for dual fuel while meeting all application requirements. The governing performance of the tractor was found to be superior than base diesel tractor.

Rotavator is an active tillage implement for breaking the Soil and for the preparation of seed bed for cultivation. The Farmers are currently facing problem due to usage of sub optimal speed of Rotavator which results in more fuel consumption, takes more time for completion of operation. Also, the Current Rental models work on Tractor + Implement as rental combination and customer not able to rent Rotavator as a standalone implement due to non-availability of Tracking information such as hours of utilization on Rotavator. Farmers not able to maintain the service periodicity, if oil change not done in prescribed duration then it may result in improper maintenance and breakdown of the Rotavator. To overcome these problems a smart Rotavator developed consists of an electronic unit fitted on the Rotavator shaft to measure the speed of the shaft rotation and in turn convert to Rotavator speed and also able to convert into Hours of usage based on the starting and stopping of the rotavator.

Over the ages of automotive history, expectations of the customers increases vastly starting from driving comfort, better fuel economy and a safe vehicle. Requirement of good vehicle drivability from customers are increasing without any compromise of fuel economy and vehicle features. To enhance the product, it is a must for every OEM’s to have better drivability to fulfill the needs of the customer. This paper explains Objective Drivability Evaluation done on compact SUV vehicle and comparison with subjective drivability. Vehicle manufacturer usually evaluate drivability based on the subjective assessments of experienced test drivers with a sequence of certain maneuvers. In this study, we have used the objective drivability assessment tool AVL drive to obtain the vehicle drivability rating. The vehicle inputs from the accelerometer sensor which captures the longitudinal acceleration and CAN bus signals such as engine speed, vehicle speed, accelerator pedal, are fed into the software.

Twist beam is a type of suspension system that is based on an H or C shaped member typically used as a rear suspension system in small and medium sized cars. The front of the H member is connected to the body through rubber bushings and the rear portion carries the stub axle assembly. Suspension systems are usually subjected to multi-axial loads in service viz. vertical, longitudinal and lateral in the descending order of magnitude. Lab tests primarily include the roll durability of the twist beam wherein both the trailing arms are in out of phase and a lateral load test. Other tests involve testing the twist beam at the vehicle level either in multi-channel road simulators or driving the vehicle on the test tracks. This is highly time consuming and requires a full vehicle and longer product development time. Limited information is available in the fatigue life comparison of multi-axial loading vs pure roll or lateral load tests.

Poor clutch life is a major issue for some light commercial vehicle models. Clutch overheating is the primary cause for clutch failure. Some of the reasons include inappropriate gear selection by the driver, poor low-end dynamic torque availability from an engine, heavy stop and go traffic, vehicle overloading resulting in excessive clutch slippage especially in gradients, riding of the clutch pedal by the customer etc. These situations lead to a high thermal energy dissipation at the clutch, increasing clutch wear and in extreme conditions leading to not only poor shift quality but also eventual clutch failure. Unfortunately, it is not practical to monitor clutch temperature in a production vehicle due to high costs or technical challenges involved. This paper describes 1-D thermal modeling of single plate dry clutch typically used in passenger car/truck and bus applications. The objective of simulation is to estimate the temperature rise on the clutch facing and clutch housing.

In today's competitive scenario, understanding mental modal map of individual customer perception plays a major role to create the brand image of vehicle. Among them “comfortable sound” is one of the important criteria for customer satisfaction, especially in case of diesel vehicle, where in-cab sound quality plays a crucial factor. Often customer perception concerning comfort in automotive industry relies on subjective comfort evaluation method. Converting the customer perception into objective measurements and to correlate them is often tough task for NVH engineers. It is because of human sensation behavior differs from persons to person, mental map, geographical location and domain knowledge. In addition acoustic & comfort relevant aspects are often subjectively evaluated based on jury trials conducted on the prototype vehicle and class competitive benchmark vehicles to get the feel & confidence of product for different gateways.

Modern day automotive market demands shorter time to market. Traditional product development involves design, virtual simulation, testing and launch. Considerable amount of time being spent on virtual validation phase of product development cycle can be saved by implementing machine learning based predictive models for key performance predictions instead of traditional CAE. Durability oil canning loadcase for vehicle hood which impacts outer styling and involves time consuming CAE workflow takes around 11 days to complete analysis at all locations. Historical oil canning CAE results can be used to build ML model and predict key oil canning performances. This enables faster decision making and first-time right design. In this paper, prediction of buckling behaviour and maximum displacement of vehicle hood using ML based predictive model are presented. Key results from past CAE analysis are used for training and validating the predictive model.

Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) simulations are an integral part of the product development process in an automotive industry. The conventional approach involving pre-processing, solving and post-processing is highly time-consuming. Emerging digital technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) can be implemented in early stage of product development cycle to predict key performances without need of traditional CAE. Oil Canning loadcase simulates the displacement and buckling behavior of vehicle outer styling panels. A ML model trained using historical oil canning simulation results can be used to predict the maximum displacement and classify buckling locations. This enables product development team in faster decision making and reduces overall turnaround time. Oil canning FE model features such as stiffness, distance from constraints, etc., are extracted for training database of the ML model. Initially, 32 model features were extracted from the FE model.

In an off-road vehicle, Vehicle Structure plays a major role in passenger safety, Aesthetics, Durability, through a validated construction of canopy structure. This structure is to maintain the shape of the vehicle and to support various loads acting on the vehicle. In present market a safe, Durable, Robust, Waterproof, Noise less, Light weight and cost-effective off-road vehicle will always be a delight for any customer. However, the current conventional way of Soft top vehicle structure use metal brackets and formed sheet parts to create a structure to retain the canopy shape in place. These conventional structures are often heavier and would have many demerits such as heavy weight, Corrosion, Risk of canopy tear due to metallic structure edges and inappropriate draining, water management. Considering this we replaced the heavy metal brackets in to blow molded plastic parts.

Serious efforts have been put in space to focus on lowering the fuel consumption and CO2 discharge to the environment from Automotive Diesel Engines. Though more focus is put on material up gradation approach on weight perspective, it is accompanied by undesirable cost increase and manufacturing complexity. As a part of development of a single cylinder engine for a light commercial vehicle application, a unique approach of integrated split type crankcase design is designed and developed. This design have addressed all the key factors on Weight, Cost and Manufacturing perspectives. The split type crankcase configuration, particularly middle-split configuration, integrates the oil sump, front cover and flywheel housing in a single unit beneficial from the point of view of reducing engine weight and thus reducing the manufacturing costs. This crankcase is also excellent from the serviceability point of view.

Ground clearance plays a vital role in an off-road vehicle during off roading. Higher the ground clearance, higher is the difficulty during ingress & egress of the vehicle. This brings in the necessity to provide entry-assist grab-handles for vehicle with more ground clearance (>200mm). Entry-assist grab handles alleviates the pain of the occupants during ingress and egress. For entry-assist grab handles’ purpose to be served, it should provide comfortable ergonomic grip & have to take the load of passengers while ingress or egress through-out the complete life cycle of the vehicle. Entry Assist grab handles can be fitted on A-Pillar zone to assist first row passengers & on B-pillar zone to assist second row passenger. Providing entry-assist grab handles on pillar trims make the grab-handles exposed to head-impact zone and hence, in most of the cases, it should pass the head impact regulations framed for respective countries.

The brass synchronizers are not resistant to abusive conditions of gearbox operations, but they are very durable and cheap when used on their favorable material property working limit. The main failure which can occur in the gearbox due to the synchronizer is crash noise. During gear shifting the gear crash will create high discomfort for the driver and must apply high force to change the gears. The main factors which contribute to the crash phenomenon are the insufficient coefficient of friction, high drag in the system, and high wear rate of the synchronizer rings before the intended design life of the synchronizer. The brass synchronizers were tested on the SSP-180, ZF synchronizer test rig to know the effect of the synchronizer performance parameters like the coefficient of friction, sleeve force, slipping time as well as durability parameters like wear rate when the operating temperature of the oil is changed.

New trend in steering system such as EPS is coming up, but still hydraulic power steering system is more prevalent in today’s vehicles. Power steering pump is a vital component of hydraulic power steering system. Failure of steering pump can lead to loss of power assistance. Prediction of hub load on pump shaft is an important design input for pump manufacturer. Higher hub loads than the actual designed load of pump bearing may lead to seizure of pump. Pump manufacturer has safe limits for hub load. Simulations can assist for optimization of belt layout and placement of accessories to reduce the hub load. Lower hub load can have direct effect on improvement of pump durability. This paper deals with dynamic simulation of belt drive system in MSC.ADAMS as well as vehicle level measurement of hub load on power steering pump.

Accurate ride and handling prediction is an important requirement in today's automobile industry. To achieve the same, it is imperative to have a good estimation of damper model. Conventional methods used for modelling complex vehicle components (like bushings and dampers) are often inadequate to represent behaviour over wide frequency ranges and/or different amplitudes. This is difficult in the part of OEMs to model the physics-based model as the damper’s geometry, material and characteristics property is proprietary to part manufacturer. This is also usually difficult to obtain as a typical data acquisition exercise takes lots of time, cost, and effort. This paper aims to address this problem by predicting the damper force accurately at different velocity/ frequency and amplitude of measured data using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN).

In recent years, the push for reduced product development timelines has been more than ever with significant changes in the automotive market. High electrification, intelligent vehicle systems and increased number for car manufacturers are a few key drivers to the same. The front loading of development activities is now a key focus area for achieving faster product development. From vehicle dynamics point of view availability of subjective evaluation feedback plays a key role in optimization various system specifications. This paper discusses an approach for front loading through parallel development of the tire and vehicle chassis system, using advanced simulation and driving simulator technology. The proposed methodology uses virtual tire models which in combination with real-time vehicle model enables subjective evaluation of vehicle performance in driver-in-loop simulators.