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 developed 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 offered 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 profited 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 toplevel research; the ESRs received outstanding Europe-wide training; and society benefits from a new group of young engineers trained in this exciting cross-disciplinary field.
The general objectives of the project were:
- To combine the knowledge and expertise from leading universities, research centres and companies in the field of eco-powertrain engineering.
- To motivate the ESRs and stimulate the interaction be- tween industry needs and academic research capacity in a joint training and research program.
- To provide a balanced training program, supporting their scientific work and cultivating their transferrable skills.
- To offer a highly innovative, multidisciplinary research program.
- To promote the transfer of knowledge among the consortium Participants and to communicate the research output to European citizens and engage with interested stakeholders.
- To facilitate the mobility of the ESRs according to their training and research needs.
- To encourage female researchers and exploit their potential in the engineering sciences.
