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The rapid evolution of automotive electronics has pushed traditional vehicle electrical and electronic (E/E) architectures to their limits. Conventional designs, characterized by point-to-point wiring harnesses, distributed domain-specific ECUs, and communication buses such as LIN, CAN, and Ethernet, impose significant drawbacks in terms of vehicle weight, integration complexity, and long-term scalability. As the industry moves toward the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) paradigm, there is a compelling need to rethink the foundational principles governing in-vehicle connectivity. This paper proposes a wireless-centric SDV architecture in which non-functional-safety-relevant sensors and actuators communicate over standardized wireless protocols, eliminating the need for their associated physical wiring. By decoupling these peripheral nodes from the wired backbone, the proposed architecture reduces harness bulk, lowers vehicle mass, minimizes redundant compute hardware, and significantly reduces integration cost. Safety-critical systems including those governing powertrain, braking, and steering are explicitly retained on hardwired, deterministic communication channels in compliance with ISO 26262 functional safety requirements. This paper additionally defines explicit assumptions and fallback behavior governing that wired/wireless boundary. The architectural framework is evaluated against key SDV design objectives such as modularity, over-the-air (OTA) updateability, and feature scalability, assessed qualitatively against published engineering precedent, with a structured validation roadmap defined to quantify latency, reliability, and coexistence performance in follow-on work. The analysis demonstrates that a hybrid wired-wireless topology can substantially simplify vehicle E/E architecture while maintaining the reliability and latency guarantees demanded by automotive-grade systems. This work contributes to a structured transition roadmap for OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers seeking to adopt SDV principles without compromising vehicle safety or regulatory compliance, together with an explicit protocol-selection framework and a functional-safety argument for the wired/wireless boundary.
Hebbale Ramkumar, Ramya, Sarkar, Dibas
Automotive radar systems do not authenticate the signals they receive, allowing an external transmitter to create phantom objects that can trigger automatic emergency braking (AEB). This paper quantifies the threat using real radar measurements from the public RadarScenes dataset and evaluates a software countermeasure that requires no hardware modification. Computer-generated phantom radar returns were added to 200 motorway sequences and adjusted so the OS-CFAR detector accepted them as real objects. In the undefended system, radar detections were tracked as obstacles and braking was initiated when an object appeared within 30 m, resulting in unnecessary braking in 87.0 percent of attacked sequences. The proposed two-layer filter combines kinematic plausibility gating with camera-radar cross-validation. Layer 1 checks track history and physical movement over three consecutive frames, while Layer 2 reduces confidence when a clear-weather radar detection lacks camera confirmation. With both layers active, false braking fell to 3.5 percent, with no genuine detections missed across 200 genuine sequences. SHAP analysis of a Random Forest classifier identified kinematic implausibility as responsible for 62.3 percent of correct suppressions and produced a machine-readable evidence record to support cybersecurity documentation under ISO/SAE 21434 and safety documentation under ISO 21448. These results apply to an offline replay experiment using synthetic injections. Validation with real attack hardware, synchronized camera data, and vehicle testing remains future work.
Sehgal, Vishal, Sekaran, Nikhil
Automotive industry is currently experiencing a major transition towards Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV) to facilitate seamless new feature integration via over the air (OTA) update. SDVs integrate more than 50 + ECUs with more than 400+ software functions, leading to significant software complexity and a substantial need for comprehensive bench level testing to prevent software issues at vehicle level. To address these challenges, a robust and edge case focused test specification is essential, ensuring maximum requirement coverage across all scenarios while incorporating insights from past bugs and field issues. Currently, the automotive industry faces challenges in producing high-quality test specifications mainly focusing on functional testing (both positive and negative scenario), fault injection testing, ISO standards testing, network management testing which often exceed 2,000 + test cases for SDV features in parallel with maintaining consistency over time, ensuring maximum system-requirement coverage, and meeting project milestones. This paper introduces a new method to overcome above said problems. We provide a comparative study involving our proposed method with other methods to show the efficacy of the proposed method.
Arumugam, Jayalakshmi
Temperature management in both residential environments and commercial vehicle cabins are rapidly evolving toward intelligent, interconnected climate-control ecosystems. However, current systems operate in isolation, with no mechanism for synchronizing thermal comfort preferences between a user’s smart home and the cabin environment of a truck used for either personal mobility, last-mile delivery, or commercial logistics. This disjointed control results in inconsistent comfort experience, unnecessary HVAC energy consumption, and the inability to anticipate user needs based on transition patterns (e.g. leaving a cool home for a hot truck cabin) between home and vehicle. To address this technical challenge, this research paper provides bidirectional communication temperature-synchronization framework in which a smart-home HVAC app communicates seamlessly with the truck’s cabin climate-control system, integrating user-specific comfort profiles(such as temperature preferences, real-time cabin and home temperature, humidity levels, HVAC operating states, outside weather forecasts, trip start times, thermal-soak estimates etc.) and environmental prediction models to maintain consistent thermal comfort across both environments. Based on user’s comfort profile, our framework derives the Comfort Deviation Index (CDI), Transient Temperature Gradient (TTG) and applies predictive algorithms to precondition the cabin or home environment accordingly. The AI technique Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network is used for forecasting temperature transitions across home-to-vehicle. Our technique becomes even more pronounced in small-haul trucks that operate under frequent stop-and-go conditions, where rapid cabin temperature fluctuations are common. There is currently no existing research or framework that enables seamless temperature synchronization between a user’s home environment and the truck cabin. A smart-home–to-cabin synchronization approach would fill this gap by intelligently accounting for outside weather, trip duration, thermal soak, and energy-efficiency constraints. Additional challenges include ensuring secure communication over cloud and edge networks, managing latency constraints for real-time actuation, and preventing conflicts between home HVAC automation and automotive HVAC control logic
Prajapati, Saurav, Sagar, Kshitij Singh, B. S., Sanchitha
The transition toward Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs) [1] is driving a fundamental shift in automotive electrical and electronic architectures [1], where centralized high-performance computing platforms must support mixed-critical workloads under strict requirements for determinism, performance isolation [2], and functional safety. Consolidating safety-critical and non-critical applications onto shared System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms [3] introduces significant challenges in ensuring predictable execution behavior, bounded latency, and compliance with safety standards [4, 15]. Addressing these challenges is essential for enabling scalable and reliable next-generation automotive systems [1] [5]. This paper presents a hardware–software co-design approach to achieve deterministic and safety-certified operation in SDV [1] architectures. Unlike traditional implementations that rely on software hypervisors or hardware isolation independently, the novel core contribution of this work is an integrated, dual-layer hardware-software orchestration model. It dynamically coordinates static Stage-2 translation with hardware Extended Resource Domain Controllers (XRDC) and Memory Partitioning and Monitoring (MPAM) to enforce end-to-end spatial, temporal, and interconnect-level bus isolation. The proposed solution combines hardware-assisted resource isolation mechanisms, including Hardware-enforced resource isolation and Memory Partitioning and Monitoring (MPAM) [6], with a lightweight partitioning hypervisor and Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM). XRDC [7] provides fine-grained access control for memory and peripheral resources, while MPAM [6] enables memory bandwidth allocation and monitoring to minimize resource contention across competing workloads. On the software side, the partitioning hypervisor [8] enforces strong temporal and spatial isolation between Virtual Electronic Control Units (vECUs), allowing mixed critical applications to coexist safely on a shared platform. VMM supports efficient virtualization [9, 10] and lifecycle management of virtual machines while maintaining deterministic execution characteristics. The proposed architecture aligns with the requirements of ISO 26262 [4], enabling the certification of safety critical applications alongside non-critical services. By integrating hardware-enforced isolation with software-level partitioning, the approach ensures predictable system behavior and reduces interference between workloads. The results demonstrate that a coordinated hardware–software strategy is essential to bridge the gap between high-performance computing and functional safety, thereby enabling scalable, deterministic, and safety-compliant SDV [1] platforms for future automotive applications. System-level validation conducted on an NXP S32G3 [7] [10] vehicle network processor platform demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed co-design. Under artificial memory-bus contention generated by background non-critical (QM) Linux traffic, the hardware-enforced MPAM bandwidth regulation reduced maximum worst-case execution time (WCET) jitter for an ASIL real-time control loop from 142.6 μs down to 8.4 μs—achieving a 94.1% reduction in latency variation. Paravirtualized hypercall operations achieved a 40.2% latency reduction compared to standard Trap-and-Emulate approaches.
Khan, Misbah Ullah
Modern day vehicles are equipped with multiple features to enhance user experience, increased safety and continuous over the air updates for upgradability and updatability of vehicles over lifetime. The implementation of every embedded automotive software feature consumes microcontroller resources (like RAM and ROM) which are highly critical and need careful handling. In an SDV architecture, where continuous software upgrades and updates are enabled, optimal feature handling becomes necessary. The microcontroller resources chosen during the development phase often reaches the threshold limit even before series production. In such scenarios, software feature enhancement/updates are challenging. When the memory is limited and becomes a constraint for installing newer features / upgrades, OEM has minimal provision to enhance or introduce new features. The paper presents framework to OEM to get a summary of how to manage functionality in a vehicle variant depending on specific demographic location and user preferences. The summary of the functionality usage is reported to end user in the vehicle system.
Chandrashekar, Sandhya, Hubli, Ashwini
Automotive E/E architecture is getting transition from distributed ECUs to high performing Zonal architectures. Traditional diagnostic methodologies based on Unified Diagnostic Services (UDS/ISO 14229) is being followed for providing failure analysis. It is difficult when debugging complex software and to find issues where lies exactly at modular level called “stack trace”. This could provide solutions for software bugs, failures or even container-level crashes in Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV). This paper provides a remote diagnostic framework that makes use of the ISO 17978 (SOVD) standard to visualize a “Vehicle-wide Crashlytics” as analogous to modern mobile application analytics with Firebase SDK. Also, the comparison of failure management with traditional diagnostic method to handling fault management in remote framework with both ISO 17978 (SOVD) and ISO 20077/20078 (Remote Diagnostic) is made. It also speaks how methodology can be formed for software logs capturing and traces execution triggered by function software level anomalies. Also, the constrains such as V2X bandwidth and data is monitored and controlled with Diagnostic Saliency Algorithm that helps to determine only relevant telemetry is transmitted via 5G or V2N. This framework proposal is checked with a simple application failure scenario, which leads to the reduction in “Mean Time to Repair” (MTTR) for software bugs. The reduction in MTTR is achieved since actionable root cause of software issue is shared directly from vehicle’s run-time environment. Future development of vehicle functions (SaaS) is expected to be integrated with SOVD and cloud-native observability patterns. This is much needed towards the scalable and quick development and deployment of applications into Vehicle as Digital Hub.
Kalirajan, Vignesh, Annamalai, Viswachandar, Balakrishnan, Arun Shankar
The Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) paradigm is reshaping automotive electronic architectures by enabling continuous software rollout & artificial intelligence (AI) evolution on platforms over the total service life of the hardware. This creates a fundamental challenge for electronic control unit (ECU) design: to enable sustained deployment, adoption & maintenance of AI models over vehicle’s lifetime. This paper presents a technology independent framework for integrating AI lifecycle management into SDV ECU architectures, while decoupling AI & software innovation from hardware constraints. It further discusses the role of scalable computing platforms based on high-performance CPUs, GPUs & SoCs, in supporting increasing AI workloads over time. In addition, the evolution of AUTOSAR-based hardware abstraction mechanisms is examined as an enabler for software portability & hardware independence. The discussed framework addresses key lifecycle aspects, including AI model deployment, versioning, rollout strategies & long-term maintainability within established automotive safety, cybersecurity frameworks. The presented work contributes to future-ready SDV systems capable of sustaining continuous AI innovation over extended operational lifetime.
Ghosh, Sayantan, Anudeepika K., Durga, Nagaraju, Yamuna
As automotive architectures evolve toward Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs) and high levels of driving automation, traditional safety analysis techniques rooted in hardware reliability require significant adaptation. The Classical Event Tree Analysis (ETA), a cornerstone of ISO 26262 functional safety compliance, relies on static, binary branching logic where each function either fails or succeeds. While highly interpretable and effective for modelling random hardware failures, classical ETA struggles to capture the dynamic, non-linear interactions, temporal degradation, and complex human-machine interface (HMI) dependencies that are characteristic of modern Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles. This paper proposes State Dependent Event Tree Analysis (SD-ETA), a methodological extension designed to integrate discrete state vectors and temporal dependencies into the classical ETA framework. SD-ETA assigns probabilities to the branches for the dynamic nonlinear interactions, temporal degradation, and complex human-machine interface (HMI) dependencies instead of binary values, thereby allowing the system state (comprising vehicle physics, environmental conditions, and driver attention metrics) to dynamically update based on the outcomes of the preceding nodes. This approach retains the visual hierarchy and regulatory familiarity of standard event trees while significantly enhancing model fidelity for Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) scenarios governed by ISO 21448. To demonstrate the necessity and utility of this methodological evolution, this paper presents a comparative case study analysing a system operating under degraded environmental conditions. The quantitative application reveals that while classical ETA predicted a relatively low collision risk by treating sensor performance as a static binary state, the dynamic SD-ETA simulation exposed a critical hidden safety gap, calculating a higher collision probability due to compounded latency and degraded physical operating parameters. Ultimately, SD-ETA equips safety practitioners and automotive regulators with a modernized, time-aware framework to accurately evaluate the complex, interacting risks of autonomous systems without sacrificing the transparency required for rigorous safety certification.
Sharma, Dhiraj Mohan, Mutagi, Megha, Reddy, Kakarla Subba
Children dying in hot cars is not a new problem. Since 1998, more than 1,000 children have died this way in the United States alone — roughly 37 every year. That number has barely been reduced, which tells something alarming: the solutions built so far aren't solving it completely. Door-based reminders are a good example of why. They trigger when a rear door opens, but opening a door doesn't confirm a child was left behind. Single-sensor setups have their own gaps too; no single sensor handles every real-world scenario reliably on its own. Multi-sensor systems get closer, but most use rigid threshold-based rules that fall apart the moment conditions deviate — a sleeping infant barely moves, a child under a blanket reads completely differently on a thermal sensor. This paper proposes Smart-ROPS (Smart Rear Occupant Protection System), an embedded ML architecture that targets these specific failure modes without needing expensive hardware or complex software. Four sensor types feed the system: millimeter-wave radar, CO₂, thermal infrared, and ultrasonic. Data from these passes through three layers — the Perception Layer handles initial sensor fusion, the Processing Layer runs a decision tree as the primary classifier, and when confidence is low, a shallow neural network steps in for ambiguous cases. If a risk is confirmed, the Intervention Layer manages the response: starting with a smartphone alert and cabin ventilation, escalating to emergency services if needed. This is presented as an architectural design contribution — hardware prototyping and real-world testing are left for future work.
Shrimal, Harsh
Brake squeal in heavy-duty S-cam drum brakes remains a persistent NVH challenge, primarily driven by friction-induced modal instabilities. Existing studies on drum brake squeal mitigation largely emphasize geometric modifications, stiffness tuning, or the application of damping treatments, while the influence of directional stiffness characteristics of friction linings remains insufficiently explored. This research presents a novel, material-centric approach by modelling the brake lining as a transversely isotropic material, characterized by six independent elastic constants, and systematically quantifying their influence on squeal-prone unstable modes using Complex Eigenvalue Analysis (CEA). A validated finite-element model of a production S-cam drum brake assembly is developed and correlated through experimental modal analysis, ensuring close agreement between predicted and measured natural frequencies and mode shapes. The validated model is then integrated with a Design of Experiments (DOE) within commercially available FEA software to quantify both main effects and higher-order interactions across practical ranges of in-plane and out-of-plane elastic moduli and shear constants. To enhance the predictive accuracy of the surrogate models, a subsequent sampling–fit study is conducted, significantly improving the coefficient of determination (R2) of the response surfaces. The refined surrogate models are employed within a Global Response Surface Methodology (GRSM) framework to perform multi-parameter optimization aimed at minimizing squeal propensity under representative operating conditions. Finally, complex eigenvalue analysis quantifies the impact of the optimized transversely isotropic property combinations on modal stability, establishing a predictive, optimization-driven methodology for robust, noise-free drum brake design. The study culminates in the identification of an optimized transversely isotropic elastic-constants signature for the friction lining, providing actionable targets for friction material formulation and reinforcement alignment. Unlike prior research focused on isotropic material assumptions or component-level design changes, this first-of-its-kind methodology advances the state of the art by enabling friction material– centric NVH optimization for heavy-duty drum brake systems.
Philip, Rony, Muralidharan, Sudharsan, Mohanam, Gopalakrishnan
EV fleets in the EU/US region are owned by a fleet manager who manages the entire fleet operation. Currently, the telematics ECU transmits a significant amount of information that can be used to our advantage for vehicle–route assignment. The beneficiaries of this solution would be the fleet managers, who will receive an optimized vehicle–route plan, and the drivers, who will be able to see their entire week’s schedule. This can be achieved using models and applications in operations research, which take in EV vehicle parameters and provide an optimal solution. Existing fleet and vehicle control strategies typically rely on fixed actuation limits or rule-based logic that are configured without direct awareness of fleet-level objectives or task-specific requirements. As a result, vehicles may operate inefficiently, experience unnecessary energy consumption, or incur accelerated component aging. There is therefore a need for a system in which fleet and task information directly influence vehicle actuation in a dynamic and coordinated manner. This approach enables fleet operators to reduce energy cost, battery degradation, and unplanned downtime by dynamically aligning vehicle actuation with actual task and fleet needs rather than static calibrations. It improves fleet utilization and scalability by allowing vehicles to automatically adapt their energy and power behavior as operational conditions change. As electrified and mixed fleets grow and complexity increases, such optimization-driven actuation becomes critical for achieving cost-efficient, reliable, and sustainable fleet operations. The scheduling is modelled in three distinct layers that is vehicle-task scheduler, charging scheduler, human driver scheduler, thereby ensuring a clean modular design.
Anavekar, Abhishek Anil, Bhowmick, Saikat
Commercial vehicles predominantly employ drum brakes because of their low cost, robustness, and simple construction. However, with the increasing push toward quieter powertrains, particularly in electric commercial vehicles, brake squeal has become a dominant noise source. The inherent complex and chaotic nature of brake squeal makes its prediction and suppression especially challenging. Traditional squeal mitigation strategies, such as modifying component mass and stiffness or using materials with higher native damping (e.g., cast iron), are inherently constrained in their capacity to mitigate instability. In such scenarios, constrained layer damping (CLD) shims have proven to be an additional, effective and practical solution in disc brakes, which is motivating growing interest in extending similar concepts to drum brake applications. A key challenge in adopting shims for drum brakes lies in identifying and achieving the required damping level necessary to suppress squeal while adhering to stringent packaging, manufacturability, and cost constraints of foundation brakes. Establishing a clear relationship between squeal propensity, noise intensity, and target damping is therefore essential. While past CLD studies discuss layer-thickness effects in generic structures and caliper brakes, no work applies thickness optimization to brake shims in a drum brake assembly. This paper presents a systematic and target-driven framework for the design of CLD shims for drum brake applications. The approach initially defines the damping requirement for squeal suppression using system noise metrics and dynamic stability evaluations. Based on this requirement, a design optimization approach is employed to determine the appropriate thickness distribution of the individual shim layers, while accounting for practical constraints such as packaging limitations, material feasibility, and manufacturing considerations inherent to foundation brake systems. The optimized CLD shim configurations obtained through this process are subsequently integrated into the drum brake assembly and evaluated using complex eigenvalue analysis. The simulations utilized a validated FE model of the S-cam drum brake assembly, whose accuracy was established through experimental modal analysis–based correlation. The results indicate that the proposed target-based shim design methodology leads to a measurable improvement in modal damping and system stability, thereby demonstrating its effectiveness as a practical and robust approach for brake squeal mitigation in drum brake systems.
Muralidharan, Sudharsan, Philip, Rony, Mohanam, Gopalakrishnan
The longitudinal dynamics during braking of articulated heavy vehicles is primarily governed by coupled load transfer mechanisms, yet the isolated influence of hitch location on axle load distribution and braking response remains insufficiently quantified. This study investigates the sensitivity of hitch height variation of a twin-axle tractor with a single-axle on the axle loads and consequently braking performance. A rigid-body longitudinal dynamics model is utilised and evaluated against a high-fidelity multibody simulation across a structured test matrix spanning friction levels and trailer loading conditions. Results show that hitch location primarily affects braking behaviour through redistribution of axle normal loads via hitch-induced pitching moments. A 400~mm increase in hitch height produces up to 5% variation in drive axle load in the unladen case, rising to approximately 16% under laden conditions. Longitudinal hitch variation yields comparable sensitivity in drive axle load, with increased influence on steer axle loading, while trailer axle load remains largely unaffected. Despite these variations, the overall braking metrics such as stopping distance and steady-state deceleration exhibit limited sensitivity to hitch location under most operating conditions. However, near friction limits, hitch-induced load redistribution significantly alters axle-wise friction utilisation and wheel lock sequence, steer axle-first at low deceleration and rear-axle-first at higher deceleration. The results demonstrate that while hitch location has a secondary effect on overall braking efficiency, it plays a critical role in stability-relevant behaviour mainly in the laden vehicle configurations. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for hitch-induced coupling in load-aware braking strategies for articulated vehicles.
Devadiga, Shravan S., Mandal, Indra, Gaurkar, Pavel, Vivekanandan, Gunasekaran, Sivaram, Sriram, Shankar Ram, C. S.
Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) is a safety-critical Advanced Driver Assistance System now mandated for commercial vehicles in India.to reduce crash frequency and severity. This paper presents a structured, simulation-based V&V approach for camera-based AEB that integrates TTC braking evaluation, Forward Collision Warning assessment, and real-time object detection validation. High-fidelity tools Hexagon VTD & ROD, and MATLAB Roadrunner are employed to generate photorealistic, India-specific scenarios capable of modelling detailed road geometry, marked and unmarked lanes, mixed traffic behavior, and diverse environmental and weather conditions. Scenario-driven testing enables frame-accurate, end-to-end assessment of detection, decision-making, and actuation without requiring access to internal algorithms (black-box validation). Across representative scenarios, the test campaign achieved up to 90% accuracy in detecting relevant targets. This validation aligns with AIS & MoRTH guidance, and adheres to UN Regulation (UN R131), while incorporating applicable ISO 26262 functional safety principles. Requirement traceability matrices are used to evaluate system behavior under sensor degradation, misclassification, and other critical edge-case conditions prevalent in Indian driving environments. The proposed methodology enables consistent, repeatable, and regulation aligned validation of camera based AEB systems, supporting safer and more reliable commercial vehicle deployment in India.
S., Nagabhushana N., P., Gururaaj, M. L., Sankar
In recent years, global automotive manufacturers have been steadfastly engaged in the pursuit of advanced technical solutions to address the increasingly stringent noise pollution standards mandated by national and international regulatory authorities for their domestic and export markets respectively. Aligned with this overarching objective, the Engine Design and Development team at Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) has undertaken focused efforts to reduce powertrain-induced noise and vibration (NV). Recognizing that the engine unit’s principal static subsystems, namely the intake and exhaust assemblies and critical structural components such as the cylinder head (CH) and cylinder block (CB), serve as primary sources of acoustic emissions, special emphasis was placed on their refinement. Additionally, particular attention was directed toward the engine’s rotating and reciprocating components, especially the camshaft and crankshaft assemblies, to minimize overall measured sound pressure levels.
Singh, Amandeep, Singh, Jaspreet, Kumar, Narinder
In truck manufacturing, each vehicle requires thousands of small parts across models and variants. Each truck requires 4,000 to 15,000 standard components, with 500 to 1,500 part types that vary slightly. During the design phase, engineers select components from extensive part libraries without complete visibility into assembly complexity, procurement impact, or total lifecycle cost. This results in high part variability on multi-model production lines, increasing operator confusion, assembly effort, rework, tooling requirements, and supply chain inefficiencies. To streamline this, the authors developed a consolidated small-parts catalogue using a data-driven approach. The existing standards, specifications, usage volumes, and cost data were analyzed, and parts were clustered based on their features. These clusters were mapped to assembly stations using a visualization based digital tool that displays all parts used at each station and highlights functionally similar components that can be used alternatively. The developed tool for optimization quantifies consolidation opportunities, provide before and after part counts, with estimated cost-saving potential to reduce complexity in the design and assembly stations. For length-based optimization, manual validation of screw lengths across variants was replaced by an automated evaluation. The automated system replaces the proposed parts at existing assembly location across variants, and evaluates collision, interference, thread engagement, and clearance with nearby components. It increases the quality and reduces significant time for each proposal. Overall, the approach identified analytical consolidation opportunities of 24% in total small-part variant count and delivered a directly measured reduction exceeding 75% per proposal length validation time. Engineering effort reduction (∼50%) and direct procurement cost savings (up to 3%) are indicative projections pending production implementation. This approach improves manufacturing robustness and standardization repeatability for future vehicle programs.
Mani, Dharmaraj, Vijayasekaran, Vinothkumar, Jyoti, Nagaraj, Fasge, Abhishek
This paper presents a Distributed Regenerative Active Suspension System (D-RASS) that integrates active suspension control with suspension-level energy regeneration in a predictive architecture. Each wheel employs an electro-hydraulic actuator interconnected through hydraulic cross-coupling and a shared DC bus, enabling coordinated force generation and bidirectional energy flow. Suspension forces are generated via controlled pressure differentials, while rebound energy is converted into electrical energy through motor–pump units operating in generator mode. Road-preview intelligence from LiDAR, radar, and geospatial data enables anticipatory suspension control. The centralized controller optimizes ride comfort, handling stability, and energy recovery by adapting force and energy flow strategies in real time. The proposed system establishes a unified framework for predictive suspension control and energy-aware vehicle dynamics.
Hazra, Sandip, Ambatkar, Kedar
Electric vehicle charging infrastructure depends on two authentication paradigms with significant weaknesses. Autocharge, defined under DIN SPEC 70121, identifies vehicles by their unprotected Media Access Control (MAC) address with no cryptographic verification. Plug and Charge under ISO 15118 adds cryptographic authentication but relies on a centralized Vehicle-to-Grid Public Key Infrastructure (V2G-PKI) that creates single points of failure and multi-hour certificate revocation windows. These weaknesses are not theoretical: CVE-2025-12357 demonstrated man-in-the-middle interception of Signal Level Attenuation Characterization (SLAC) exchanges, and field studies have documented Transport Layer Security (TLS) silent downgrades in over 30 commercial vehicles. This paper describes a blockchain-anchored framework that brings both sets of existing solutions under a single decentralized trust layer built on a permissioned Hyperledger Fabric consortium of Original Equipment Manufacturers, Charge Point Operators, and e-Mobility Service Providers. A compact Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) token with rotating pseudonyms handles vehicle authentication, charger side caching enables sub-millisecond verification for known vehicles and credential revocation propagates through blockchain event subscriptions rather than periodic certificate list refreshes. A calibrated Python simulation with real ECDSA operations yields a median cache-hit latency of 81 microseconds on a warm cache (76 microseconds in the city case). Under realistic city deployment conditions with 85 percent local traffic, that median holds while outperforming Autocharge by 375 times and PnC with Online Certificate Status Protocol by 3,700 times. Highway and rural chargers starting with empty caches see median latency around 10 milliseconds, still 3 times faster than Autocharge and 30 times faster than PnC with OCSP. Revocation reaches every consortium peer within one block-commit cycle, measured at 2.04 s worst-case on a live multi-node Hyperledger Fabric network. All tested scenarios remain within ISO 15118 Session Discovery Protocol timing budgets.
Tumram, Sayali Ashok
Tires are the sole interface elements between the road and the vehicle. The wheel alignment and orientation with respect to the vehicle body and the road surface have a significant influence on the force transmission and thus on the safety and handling of the vehicle. The geometry and design of the wheel suspension, and therefore its kinematics, govern this alignment and orientation. Ideally, rigid suspension joints with zero-play and tight tolerances are desirable for stable and safe vehicle behavior. However, owing to manufacturing complexities and ride comfort requirements, elastomer bushings are used in the suspension joints, which results in compliance altering the wheel alignment under force application. Considering the elastokinematic behavior during the early concept development phases of the vehicle would provide more accurate and realistic predictions of suspension characteristics and vehicle dynamics. Conventional approaches typically use non-linear modelling techniques, which are complex and computationally intensive for simulating such suspension layouts. The paper proposes a computationally efficient linear modelling methodology for simulating the elastokinematic behavior of double wishbone front suspensions. This approach is based on a decoupled formulation, where the force equilibrium equations and wheel motion equations are solved separately to determine compliance-induced variations in wheel alignment. The proposed method has been implemented as an elastokinematic module to enhance an in-house developed suspension kinematics software. The methodology has been verified by comparing the results with Adams/Car Multi Body simulations (MBS) for various configurations of double wishbone front suspensions. Results demonstrated that the proposed linear approach achieves significantly reduced computation times while maintaining very good accuracy, enabling faster iterations and optimization cycles. This leads to shorter development cycles and contributes to achieving a higher maturity level of the suspension concept at the end of the concept development phase.
Vemireddy, Karthik Reddy, Karra, Varun Reddy
Finite element (FE) models of Body In White (BIW) structures are inherently large and computationally intensive due to a high number of degrees of freedom. Performing optimization studies of body structures in a full BIW model requires a significant amount of time, as each optimization cycle requires multiple iterations of the complete FE model. To reduce computational effort, techniques such as the Component Mode Synthesis (CMS) based reduction methods are commonly utilized. In this work, we adopt the Craig Bampton Nodal (CBN) approach by retaining the component targeted for optimization as the residual structure, while condensing the remaining BIW into a super element. This strategy significantly decreases simulation runtime. To generate the reduced model, all the interface nodes that connect the retained residual with the super-element structure need to be defined as analysis sets (ASETs). Earlier studies primarily considered residual structures connected through simple RBE2 bolt connections, resulting in a relatively small set of ASET nodes. In the present work, we address more realistic BIW assemblies incorporating complex joining technologies such as spot welds, structural adhesives, bolts, rivets and other intricate connection schemes. This leads to a substantially larger number of ASET nodes. A high ASET count increases boundary condition complexity, memory requirements, and overall simulation runtime, thereby limiting the efficiency of the reduced model. This paper proposes a novel methodology to simplify the connection interfaces between the optimization component and the rest of the BIW while preserving essential dynamic characteristics. With this strategy the number of ASET grids is reduced by roughly 70%, thereby reducing the computation time by approximately 80% without compromising accuracy. The resulting reduced order model enables rapid execution of multiple optimization studies through an efficient use of computational resources, thereby reducing overall lead time and improving the feasibility of iterative design exploration in early vehicle development.
Rajendran, Hariprasad, Pal, Arkaprabho, Schauwecker, Florian
Accurately predicting Thermal and Flow parameters in Battery Pack Thermal Management System is very important to ensure maximum system efficiency, long range and vehicle safety. Traditionally, conventional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods are used to get detailed insights into these parameters. But these methods remain computationally very expensive, which limits their application in real-time predictions. This study presents an alternate structured simulation framework that combines CFD fundamentals with Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) to enable fast and efficient prediction of thermal and flow behavior. PINNs incorporates the governing partial differential equations (PDEs) - mass, momentum and energy – directly into the neural network's loss function, enabling efficient learning with limited dependency on training datasets. In this study, we present a PINN framework trained on limited datasets derived from general CFD simulations of flow and Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) cases for a battery pack. The trained PINN model is then validated against a separate set of test datasets obtained from independent studies, across key performance parameters including pressure drop, velocity, temperature distribution, and hotspot location. Comparative analysis indicates that the proposed PINN framework predicts key parameters within 5% deviation from test dataset values. The PINN model also significantly reduces computational time from 5-8 hours per case for traditional detailed CFD to 2-3 seconds. Additionally, the PINN framework requires only a closed-volume CAD geometry and does not rely on 3D-mesh. Limited data can be used to speed up the training process, thereby eliminating the time associated with pre-processing, repeated model setup for different cases, and subsequent corrections. Findings from this study demonstrate PINNs as a potential surrogate modelling tool for real-time thermal monitoring and rapid design iteration in battery cooling systems. This reduces dependency on computationally expensive simulations, thereby reducing development cycles and faster time for customers. This work shows a scalable physics-informed neural-network framework that can be extended beyond battery systems to other components at system and vehicle levels.
Sarkar, Shantanu, Lakshmanan, Yoganathan, A., Raju
Rollover stability is a critical safety requirement for heavy-duty trucks, particularly during severe manoeuvres and tipping-prone operating conditions. Accurate estimation of stabilizer bar forces plays an important role in assessing vehicle rollover behaviour. This study presents a finite element-based virtual strain gauge calibration methodology for estimating stabilizer bar forces from measured strain signals, using a heavy-duty vehicle tipping stability application as an industrial case study. A high-fidelity vehicle dynamics model was developed to assess the influence of the stabilizer bar on vehicle roll performance. To increase confidence in the virtual assessment, strain measurements were obtained from instrumented stabilizer bars during durability track testing and correlated with simulation results. A key challenge in the measurement process was the calibration required to convert strain signals into applied forces. To address this, a virtual calibration approach was developed using finite element analysis to establish linear strain-force transfer relationships. By combining FEM-derived transfer functions with measured strain data, stabilizer bar forces were successfully reconstructed under real operating conditions without the need for conventional physical calibration. Correlation between simulation and test measurements demonstrated the capability of the proposed methodology to estimate component loads with good accuracy. The results show that virtual strain gauge calibration can significantly reduce reliance on dedicated test rigs and prototype-based calibration activities, enabling earlier load assessment and more efficient chassis development. The methodology is scalable and can be extended to other dynamically loaded suspension and chassis components for durability and vehicle dynamics applications.
Thirunavukkarasu, Siddeshwaran, Sheepri, Sunil, N., Balagangadharan
Rapid electrification of the automotive industry has significantly increased the functional complexity and safety expectations of Battery Management Systems (BMS) used in electric vehicles. While Model-in-the-Loop (MIL) testing remains a standard practice for early-stage verification of control algorithms, it is inherently limited in its ability to represent real time execution effects and physical hardware interactions. Critical BMS functions, including protection timing validation, sensor interface behavior, contactor actuation logic and fault detection mechanisms are strongly influenced by hardware characteristics such as signal conditioning, analog to digital conversion, execution latency, and nonlinear component behavior, which cannot be accurately captured in a software only environment. This paper presents the application of Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing as an essential validation methodology for safety critical BMS functions by interfacing the production intent BMS controller with a real time simulated battery environment. The proposed HIL setup enables realistic interaction between embedded software and physical I/O interfaces, allowing systematic evaluation of BMS behavior under normal operating conditions as well as controlled electrical, thermal, and communication fault scenarios. Key validation aspects include protection of response timing, robustness of fault handling logic, and system behavior under transient and abnormal conditions. The study demonstrates that HIL testing effectively bridges the validation gap between MIL simulations and vehicle level testing by enabling early identification of hardware–software integration issues. This approach enhances confidence in functional safety readiness, reduces development risk, and supports compliance with established automotive development workflows. The presented methodology aligns with established automotive development practices and provides a practical framework for robust BMS validation at bench level prior to vehicle level.
Patowary, Suman, Kumar, Aashish, Choudhary, Abhilash, Kumar, Abhishek, Bora, Abhijit
As the global automotive industry increasingly prioritizes electrification and long-term sustainability, the demand for aggressive lightweighting in automotive chassis engineering has intensified. This study presents a process-driven, multi-stage structural optimization workflow designed to maximize total mass reduction while maintaining rigorous structural performance. To mitigate the high computational costs and software license overhead of nonlinear Finite Element (FE) analysis, the methodology transforms complex models into efficient linear representations. This strategic shift preserves critical structural behaviors while significantly enhancing license efficiency and total computational simulation throughput. The novelty of this workflow lies in an integrated optimization loop that begins with Topology Optimization to define primary load paths, followed by Free Shape Optimization to mitigate stress concentrations. By embedding manufacturing constraints such as draft angles and minimum thickness directly into the optimization process, the methodology effectively eliminates traditional redesign cycles. Optimized designs are then seamlessly translated into CAD via advanced ANSA tools for validation of von Mises stress, plastic strain, and buckling. This synchronized transition from analysis to realization reduced the development cycle by 50%, enabling a design freeze significantly faster than conventional methods. The integrated approach achieved a 15% mass reduction while meeting all functional durability and crash requirements. Given that a 1% reduction in mass correlates directly to a 1% reduction in CO2 emissions, the resulting design substantially minimizes the vehicle's total carbon footprint. By lowering material consumption and maximizing computational efficiency, this study offers a repeatable solution for balancing simulation fidelity with the urgent demands of modern sustainable automotive design.
Venkataraman, Nageswaran, Rajendran, Hariprasad, Karimbedu, Saikumar, Yadav, Balwan