Reducing emissions and pollution in all aspects of daily life is high on the EU’s agenda. Road transport is also complying with strict emissions regulations, paving the way with electric vehicles (EVs), internal combustion engines and hybrids eco-powertrains. However, there is an urgent need to test and simulate several complex challenges related to performance. The EU-funded ECO DRIVE project will train a new generation of experts to address the complex challenges related to combustion noise, the irritating sound from electric motors, transmission-induced NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) and driveline torsional vibrations, leading to new designs with improved eco-efficiency and performance. The project has nine beneficiaries from leading academic institutions, top research centres and Europe’s premier vehicle producers.
Objective
With increasing regulatory pressures to reduce emissions, road transport has to play its part. Over the next 30 years, as we shift towards EVs, downsized IC engines and hybrids with eco-powertrains will be central to the automotive sector. ECO DRIVE will develop new technologies for the testing and simulation of eco-powertrains, addressing the complex challenges related to combustion noise, the irritating sound from electric motors, transmission-induced NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) and driveline torsional vibrations, leading to new designs with improved eco-efficiency and NVH performance. The project offers a multi-disciplinary research-training program to the ESRs, with the ultimate aim being to create a new generation of NVH professionals for the transport sector. The technical-scientific challenges are tough: to investigate highly innovative simulation, testing and signal-processing methods for advanced NVH analysis and the engineering of downsized IC engines, e-motors, and novel lightweight transmission systems, to validate and demonstrate the applicability of the developed approaches in an industry context, on both powertrain tests rigs and new vehicles. ECO DRIVE has 9 Beneficiaries from leading academic institutions, top research centres and Europe’s premier vehicle producers. Together, they address the triple-I dimension of research training, being International, Interdisciplinary and Intersectoral. The ESRs profit from top scientific research guidance in combination with highly relevant industrial supervision through the secondment exchanges between the research organizations and the industry partners. The training programme is designed to cover not only eco-powertrains, but also critical transferable skills. The participating organisations gain from their involvement with top-level research; the ESRs receive outstanding Europe-wide training; and society benefits from a new group of young engineers trained in this exciting cross-disciplinary field.
