Situation and Objective:
An Asian vehicle manufacturer has significant growth plans for the US market and will introduce a new family of vehicles. Parts commonality targets from existing products exceed 65% and all products will need to meet US10 emission regulations.
Ricardo Responsibilities:
The Ricardo team was involved from the earlier concept design stages and was focused on the early use of CAE tools to develop a robust concept design as quickly as possible. Significant competitor benchmarking activity was also completed across various vehicle systems against the future primary competitor vehicles in the US market.
Ricardo had a significant engineering team based in Asia directly supporting the vehicle manufacturers organisation, Ricardo's responsibilities included:
- Engine and transmission package and installation (3 configurations - gasoline and diesel).
- Powertrain cooling and analysis.
- Intake and exhaust system design and package (incl aftertreatment).
- Chassis frame design and optimisation.
- Vehicle dynamics (ADAMS based) and suspension design and optimisation.
- Fuel system design and package.
- Powertrain control system architecture support.
- Whole vehicle NVH modelling.
- Steering system specification and package.
- Fuel consumption modelling and analysis.
Results and Benefits:
- Creation of spectenders, 2D drawings and prototype design releases.
- Complete portfolio of CAE analysis reports and design recommendations.
- Release of production intent BOM.
- Direct interface to key system suppliers to optimise system design at earliest possible design stage.