The customer expectations in the passenger car market are predominantly in the areas of engine/vehicle performance along with NVH refinement. In addition, continuously evolving regulatory emission and crash norms with system cost considerations bring out multiple challenges on to design engineers. One of the vehicle systems that has its footprints on all of the above requirements is the engine air intake system. In this paper, using multidisciplinary approach we discuss the impact of air intake system design of a 3-cylinder gasoline engine on different attributes of customer requirements.
The primary function of the air intake system is to provide filtered air to the engine. However, this paper explains how requirements like engine performance, NVH refinement, regulatory and styling, durability, servicing and system cost are affected by intake system design parameters.
The competitive edge of a car manufacturing company is dependent on the ability to quickly launch new products which are value intensive, cost effective, which cater to the ever-increasing vehicle refinement expectations and most importantly which follows “first time right” approach. This paper elaborates on different optimization criteria related to intake system design that come in handy during the important phase of concept evaluation/selection of different intake system options during the product development cycle of the intake system. These optimization criteria if considered during the initial phases of concept evaluation and selection helps the design responsible team to cater for timely and cost effective delivery by avoiding time consuming and expensive design/tool modifications during the later stages of product development cycle.