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Automotive OEMs quest for vehicle body light weighting, increase in Fuel efficiency along with significant cut in the emissions pose significant challenges. Apart from the effect on vehicle handling, the reduction of vehicle weight also results in additional general requirements for acoustic measures as it is an important aspect that contributes to the comfort and the sound quality image of the vehicle, thus posing a unique challenge to body designers and NVH experts. Due to these conflicting objectives, accurate identification along with knowledge of the transfer paths of vibrations and noise in the vehicle is needed to facilitate measures for booming noise dampening and vehicle structure vibration amplitude. This paper focuses on the application of a unique design and development of vehicle body structure anti-vibration dynamic damper (DD), unique in its aspect in controlling booming noise generated at a specific RPM range.

Single body architecture designed for various global markets and subjected to varied load cases is a challenge for Body in White (BIW) engineers. Optimization of structural design to meet regulatory, insurance and assessment requirements is an iterative and time consuming task. With focus on reduction of vehicle's damageability and ease of repairability Original Equipment Manufactures (OEM), insurance companies and Research Council for Automobile Repairs (RCAR) [1] are striving for better designs. A space constraint crash box structure installed behind the bumper plays a significant role in absorption of energy, before transmitting to longitudinal rails. In this study, crashworthiness of a multipurpose crash box for a hatch segment vehicle is presented with the various design of experiments conducted with a focus on light weighting, cost and ease of manufacturing.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used extensively in the optimization of modern passenger car to meet the ever growing need of higher fuel economy, better engine and underbody cooling. One of the way to achieve better fuel economy is to reduce the vehicle overall resistance to flow, know as drag. Vehicle drag is a complex phenomenon governed by vehicle styling, component shape, layout and driving velocity and road conditions. To reduce the drag a lot of aero-parts are used these days such as air-dam, skirts, spoiler, undercover, dams etc. However the design of these aero-parts must be optimized to get the desired result as their addition alone does not guarantee improvement in performance. This paper aims at studying the effect of air-dam height and position on vehicle aerodynamics. Also the effect of air-dam addition was verified using fuel economy simulations.

Estimation by World health organization reveals that by 2020, road traffic injuries may be the third leading contributor for the cause of death with significant proportion of pedestrian causalities [9]. Pedestrian safety was not considered essential for vehicle design for developing countries, due to the vehicle manufacturer's reluctance to invest in area not governed by legislation, unavailability of new car assessment programs. However, as regulatory norms are turning out to be more stringent with increased competition of NCAP star ratings, advancements in vehicle research, significant progress in this field of safety is being made without compromising on contradictory fields like vehicle low speed insurance, stiffness etc. This paper provides an insight into the recent findings at MARUTI SUZUKI INDIA'S R&D centre, aimed at improving the lower leg pedestrian performance in the new model design with special attention to NCAP ratings.