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Foundry industries are very much familiar and rich experience of producing ferrous castings mainly Flake Graphite (FG) and Spheroidal Graphite (SG) cast iron. Grey cast iron material is mainly used for dampening applications and spheroidal graphite cast iron is used in structural applications wherein high strength and moderate ductility is necessary to meet the functional requirements. However, both types of cast iron grades are very much suitable in terms of manufacturing in an economical way. Those grades are commercially available and being consumed in various industries like automotive, agriculture etc, High strength SG Iron grades also being manufactured by modifying the alloying elements with copper, chromium, manganese andcobalt. but it has its own limitation of reduction in elongation when moving from low to high strength SG iron material. To overcome this limitation a new cast iron developed by modifying the chemical composition.

There is a higher demand for quieter tractors in the agri-industry, as the continued exposure to noise levels have disastrous effects on operator’s health. To meet the world-wide regulatory norms and to be the global market leader, its mandatory to develop the comfortable tractor which meets homologation requirements and customer expectations. Typically, Operator Ear Level (OEL) noise has been evaluated in the test, after First Proto has been made. This approach increases cost associated with product development due to late changes of modifications and testing trails causing delay in time-to-market aspect. Hence, there is a need to develop the methodology for Predicting tractor OEL noise in virtual environment and propose changes at early stage of product development. At first, full vehicle comprising of skid, sheet metals and Intake-exhaust systems modelled has been built using Finite Element (FE) Preprocessor.

First time right vehicle performance and time to market, remains all automotive OEMs top priority, to remain competitive. NVH performance of product communicates impression to customer, remains one of the most important and complex attribute to meet, considering performances to be met for 20 Hz -6000 Hz. Frontloading techniques (FEM/BEM/SEA/MBD) for NVH are critical and necessary to achieve first time right NVH performance. Objective of this paper is to present a frontloading approach for automotive sound package optimization (absorber, barrier and damper elements) for SUV vehicle. Current process of designing sound package is mainly based on experience, competitive benchmarking of predecessor products. This process (current process) heavily depend on testing and validation at physical prototype and happens at later stages of program, especially on tooled up body.

The ever-increasing customer expectations put a lot of pressure on car manufacturers to constantly reduce the noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) levels. This paper presents the holistic approach used to achieve best-in-class NVH levels in a modern high-power density 1.5 lit 4-cylinder diesel engine. In order to define the NVH targets for the engine, global benchmark engines were analysed with similar cubic capacity, power density, number of cylinders and charging system. Moreover, a benchmark diesel engine (considered as best-in-class in NVH) was measured in a semi-anechoic chamber to define the engine-level NVH targets of the new engine. The architecture selection and design of all the critical components were done giving due consideration to NVH behaviour while keeping a check on the weight and cost.

Till recently supercharging was the most accepted technique for boost solution in gasoline engines. Recent advents in turbochargers introduced turbocharging technology into gasoline engines. Turbocharging of gasoline engines has helped in powertrains with higher power density and less overall weight. Along with the advantages in performance, new challenges arise, both in terms of thermal management as well as overall acoustic performance of powertrains. The study focuses mainly on NVH aspects of turbocharging of gasoline engines. Compressor surge is a most common phenomenon in turbochargers. As the operating point on the compressor map moves closer to the surge line, the compressor starts to generate noise. The amplitude and frequency of the noise depends on the proximity of the operating point to the surge line. The severity of noise can be reduced by selecting a turbocharger with enough compressor surge margin.

One of the major discomforts while driving any medium to heavy commercial vehicle is brake judder. Brake judder can be defined as vibrations felt on steering wheel or brake pedal or cabin floor, when brakes are applied at certain speeds and pressures. The frequencies of this judder lie as high as 100 Hz to as low as 20 Hz. The brake judder is caused by a number of factors, which makes providing a universal solution difficult. Some of the causes are related to part fitment, part quality, material selection, manufacturing process, Design consideration, environmental factors, etc. This paper gives us a brief idea about resolution of judder problem in intermediate commercial vehicle by series of trials and this methodology can be applied in heavy commercial vehicles also. This paper gives reader an insight about step by step root cause analysis of brake judder on actual vehicle and an approach in resolving the judder problem.

In automotive Body-In-White (BIW) structures, stiffness and the fatigue behavior is greatly influenced by the properties of its joints. Spot welding is one of the most widely used process for joining of sheet metals in BIW. Spot weld fatigue life under Accelerated Durability Test (ADT) is crucial for durability performance of BIW structures. Experience of BIW validations highlighted more number of spot weld failures in CAE when compared to actual tests. Hence, lot of iterations in the form of design modifications are required to be carried out to make these spot welds meet the targets which increases design & development time as well as cost. Current practice uses force-based approach for predicting spot weld fatigue life in CAE. To improve the spot weld fatigue life correlation, extensive study has been carried out on the approaches used for calculating spot weld fatigue life, namely force & stress-based approaches.

Aesthetics contribute significantly to the customer’s buying decision of an automobile. This is traditionally achieved through painting. Sustainability and cost challenges have led automakers to look at substituting painting through molded-in color polymers in decorative bezels like pillar appliques. These appliques and bezels have a unique mix of material requirements that include color tone, gloss, stiffness, scratch resistance and weathering. Polycarbonates are an interesting class of polymers that has the potential to meet these challenging requirements. This paper reports the work done in evaluating a polycarbonate compound in piano black shade to meet the functional and aesthetic requirements. The results prove that the material can substitute painting thereby resulting in significant cost savings. This is a ready to mold material used in injection molding process. This modified polycarbonate material has been explored for thin wall appliques and bezels with thickness of 2.7 mm.

Reducing the vibrations in the powertrain is one of the prime necessities in today's automobiles from NVH and strength perspectives. The necessity of 4×4 powertrain is increasing for better control on normal road and off-road vehicles. This leads to bulky powertrains. The vehicle speeds are increasing, that requires engines to run at higher speeds. Also to save on material costs and improve on fuel economy there is a need for optimizing the mass of the engine/vehicle. The reduced stiffness and higher speeds lead to increased noise and vibrations. One more challenge a powertrain design engineer has to face during design of its transmission housings is the bending / torsional mode vibrations of powertrain assembly. This aggravates other concerns such as shift lever vibrations, shift lever rattle, rise in in-cab noise, generation of boom noise at certain speeds, etc. Hence, reducing vibrations becomes an important and difficult aspect in design of an automobile.

Noise & sound quality has gained equal importance as that of emissions and crash safety of the vehicles. With increased engine power to weight ratio, the challenges for NVH engineers has increased multifold. Passenger compartment comfort levels are getting affected largely due to lighter and powerful engines. Same time, there is pressure to reduce overall vehicle weight and cost. This impose constraints to NVH engineer in designing the body structure and sound package to reduce the effect of powertrain forces and airborne noise on passenger compartment. In addition to weight constraints, there is trend emerging to use two & three cylinder engines which need to perform on par with four cylinder engines. This has shown adverse effect on vehicle NVH performance due to wider low frequency unbalance forces.

Increase in customer's awareness for better vehicle NVH has prompted automobile industry to address NVH issues more seriously. Among other critical vehicle systems for NVH, Air Intake and Exhaust Systems play an important role in terms of passenger compartment noise, sound quality and vehicle pass-by noise. Hence proper design & development of these systems is imperative to reduce their contribution in overall vehicle NVH. This needs to be achieved within constraints of meeting other functional requirements such as emissions and engine performance. The design parameters one needs to look at while developing the intake and exhaust system are mainly the acoustic transmission loss, structural noise radiations from the surfaces and structural isolation between body and these systems. This paper demonstrates the use of FEM approach for Vibro-Acoustic Analysis as a practical means for design of intake and exhaust system in terms of high transmission loss.

Exhaust system is one of the complex automotive systems in terms of performance and strength prediction due to combination of transient mechanical and thermal loads acting on it simultaneously. Traditionally, most of automotive vehicles have exhaust systems with hot end mounted on engine and cold end mounted on chassis or BIW through hangers. A new powertrain mounted exhaust system was developed in-house. This exhaust system underwent validation and evaluation during development phase. Durability concerns were observed on exhaust system in Track test and gear shift durability test. This paper focuses on identifying the root cause of these concerns based on the failures observed during evaluation in Accelerated Durability (ADT) and gear shift durability (GSD) tests. Based on the architecture and packaging space challenges in vehicle, engine is mounted on two mounts and a roll restrictor. Muffler, which has higher inertia, is mounted at higher offset with respect to engine rolling axis.

In today's competitive automobile marketplace with reduced vehicle development time and fewer prototypes/tests, CAE is playing very crucial role in vehicle development. Automobile environment demands ever improving levels of vehicle refinement. Performance and refinement are the key factors which can influence the market acceptance of vehicle. Driveline is one of the key systems whose refinement plays critical role in improved customer satisfaction. Because of the virtue of the driveline functionality, driveline induced noise and vibration are the most common issues in the AWD vehicle development programs. Refinement of the drive line needs complicated nonlinear full vehicle CAE MBD models for the evaluation of driveline induced noise and vibration responses at different operating conditions [1]. In this paper a simplified approach is adapted for solving the Noise & Vibration issue which has been identified at the prototype testing level of an AWD vehicle development.

A tractor is vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds for carrying out various agriculture operations like ploughing, rotavation etc. using implement. Hydraulic system is a key feature which connects these implements with the tractor. It controls the position and draft of the implement depending upon the type of crop, farming stage, implement type and soil conditions. These variations induces extreme range of load on the hydraulic system, thus making it challenging to design these components. Bell crank assembly is one of the main components of hydraulic system which controls the draft (thus, the loads experienced by tractor) through load sensing mechanism. Often bell crank assembly failures are reported from field due to uneven soil hardness and presence of rocks. This paper studies one of such bell crank assembly failures in the field. The failure was reported after half life cycle of usage during agriculture Operation.

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.

By reducing overall noise emanating from Engine at design phase, permits to reduce both time-to-market and the cost for developing new engines. In order to reduce vibration and radiated noise in engine assembly, oil pan is one of the most critical components. This study explains the key-steps that are executed to optimize the oil pan design for 4-cylinder diesel engine by improving Normal Modes, modified Topology, reduced Forced Frequency Response and ATV analysis for reducing its noise radiation. Using Multi-body tool crankshaft forces were generated and the FE model of Base Design was analysed for its noise radiation and panel contribution was done for finding the most radiating panels using Boundary Element Method approach. A series of iterative optimization were carried out with commercial software. Parameters like Stiffness, material property, Ribbing patterns and Shape of the Oil pan was modified to shift the natural frequencies of the component and reduce the sound radiation.

Today’s automotive industry in the process of better fuel efficiency and aiming less carbon foot print is trying to incorporate energy saving and hybrid technologies in their products. One of the trends which has been followed by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) is the usage of Electric Power Steering (EPS) system. This has been an effective option to target fuel saving as compared to hydraulically assisted power steering system. EPS has been already tested successfully, not only on system level but also on vehicle level for endurance and performance by OEMs as per their norms and standards. Over the decade, NVH (noise, vibration & harshness) have become one of the touch points for customer perception about vehicle quality. This leads us to a commonly perceived problem in EPS or manual type steering system i.e. rattle noise.

In today’s automotive scenario, noise vibration and harshness (NVH) has become a synonym for quality perception. This paper evaluates the problem of vibration and noise experienced in M2 category 40 seat bus and suggests the counter measures. Severe vibration is experienced on the bus floor, predominantly towards rear part of the bus. Vibration along with acoustic boom occurs prominently in 4th gear wide open throttle operating condition between 1300-1600 rpm of the engine. This paper focuses on reducing NVH levels by working on the transfer path with little modifications on power-train. Preliminary torsional measurements conducted on powertrain indicated high torsional excitation in the driveline during the problematic rpm zone. Further, Operational Deflection Shape (ODS) analysis revealed that the transfer path to the cabin is rear differential unit and suspension links. The dominant frequencies were identified along the transfer path and suitable modifications were done.

NVH is becoming one of the major factor for customer selection of vehicle along with parameters like fuel economy and drivability. One of the major NVH challenges is to have a vehicle with aggressive drivability and at the same time with acceptable noise and vibration levels. This paper focuses on the compact utility vehicle where the howling noise is occurring at higher rpm of the engine. The vehicle is powered by three cylinder turbocharged diesel engine. The noise levels were higher above 2500 rpm due to the presence of structural resonance. Operational deflection shapes (ODS) and Transfer path analysis (TPA) analysis was done on entire vehicle and powertrain to find out the major reason for howling noise at higher engine rpm. It is observed that the major contribution for noise at higher rpm is due to modal coupling between powertrain, half shaft and vehicle sub frame.

The noise and vibration performance of diesel fueled automotives is critical for overall customer comfort. The stationary vehicle with engine running idle (Vehicle Idle) is a very common operating condition in city driving cycle. Hence it is most common comfort assessment criteria for diesel vehicles. Simulations and optimization of it in an early stage of product development cycle is priority for all OEMs. In vehicle idle condition, powertrain is the only major source of Noise and Vibrations. The key to First Time Right Idle NVH simulations and optimization remains being able to optimize all Transfer paths, from powertrain mounts to Driver Ear. This Paper talks about the approach established for simulations and optimization of powertrain forces entering in to frame by optimizing powertrain mount hard points and stiffness. Powertrain forces optimized through set process are further used to predict the vehicle passenger compartment noise and steering vibrations.