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In worldwide automotive markets, the migration of customers towards smaller cars having compact, fuel-efficient design is well established and accepted as an engineering challenge by global automotive OEMs. Tata Motors of India has established a precedent by developing an ultra low cost and light weight car (the Nano), and has thereby created a new market segment for such cars that are more affordable to most of the population. This is now becoming established as a brand of low cost, safe transport in both rural and urban market segments. Despite the market moving towards such compact, fuel-efficient designs, customers are unwilling to lose many of the vehicle attributes to which they have been accustomed in previous types of entry-level cars. Addressing this marketing requirement places some significant challenges before the designers of this type of car.

Among the key parameters that decide the success of a vehicle in today's competitive market are quietness of passenger cabin (in respect of both airborne and structure-borne noise) and low levels of disturbing vibration felt by the occupants. To control these values in body-on-frame construction vehicles, it is necessary to identify major transfer paths and optimize the isolation characteristics of the elastomeric mounts placed at several locations between a frame and the enclosed passenger cabin of the vehicle. These body mounts play a dominant role in controlling the structure-borne noise and vibrations at floor and seat rails resulting from engine and driveline excitations, and they are also a vital element in the vehicle ride comfort tuning across a wide frequency range. In the work described in this paper, transfer path tracking was used to identify root cause for the higher noise and vibration levels of a diesel-powered sports utility vehicle.

Comfortable cabin environment from temperature, noise and vibration point of view is one of the most desirable aspects of any vehicle operating in hot or cold environment. Noise generated from HVAC system is one of the most irritating phenomena resulting in customer dissatisfaction and complaints. It becomes absolutely necessary to have low HVAC noise levels when the target market has hot weather all round the year. Balance between control of temperature in desired way with least possible noise and vibration is the key for HVAC performance optimization within constrains posed by design and cost. This paper describes the approach for NVH refinement of front HVAC system proposed for a vehicle with limited off-road capability for which packaging constraints and late changes related to airflow and HVAC unit design for meeting comfort and crash requirements resulted in deterioration of noise and vibrations while operation.

Baffle plates with heat reactive expandable foam sealants have increasingly found their applications in automotives. They are used to separate body cavities and to impede noise, water and dust propagation inside of body cavities, thus control noise intrusion into the passenger compartment. Use of these sealant materials has grown significantly as the demands to improve vehicle acoustic performance has increased. Traditionally quantification of the acoustic performance of expandable baffle samples involved making separate vehicles with and without expandable baffles and measure the incab noise to know the effect. The absolute acoustic evaluation of the baffles is very difficult as number of other vehicle parameters is also responsible for vehicle incab noise. Also, it is a time consuming and a costly method to evaluate.

Small goods carrier and passenger vehicles powered by Naturally Aspirated (NA) Direct Injection (DI) diesel engines are popular in Indian automobile market. However, they suffer from inherently high radiated noise and poorly perceived sound quality. This paper documents the steps taken to reduce the radiated noise level from such an engine through structural modifications of major noise radiating components identified in the sound power analysis. The work is summarized as follows; Baseline radiated noise measurements of power train and identification of major noise sources through sound intensity mapping and noise source ranking (NSR) in an Engine Noise Test Cell (ENTC) Design modifications for identified major sources in engine structure Vehicle level assessment of the radiated noise in a Vehicle Semi-Anechoic Chamber (VSAC) for all the design modifications. A reduction of 7 dB at hot idle and 4 - 8 dB in loaded speed sweep conditions was observed with the recommended modifications.