Fatigue Life Predictions for a European Pavement Test Section Subjected to Individual and Platoon Truck Configurations

Truck platooning for the transportation of loads is a strategy recently proposed by the automotive sector to cope with traffic congestion, fuel consumption, and operational costs. This new way of configuring trucks changes the typical pressures pavements structures experience. For this reason, the research efforts of the pavement sector should be aligned with the automotive sector to propose road-friendly platoon configurations. This is one of the objectives of the European project ENSEMBLE. ENSEMBLE, as indicated by its acronym, works on ENabling SafE Multi-Brand pLatooning for Europe. In this context, the present study presents a real scale test done in the Applus IDIADA facilities to evaluate the fatigue behavior of a pavement structure subjected to individual and platoon truck configurations. The effects of parameters such as traffic distribution through the year and by time of day, percentage of platoons, truck loads, number of trucks in platoon configuration, lateral wandering, and inter-truck distances were evaluated. The study’s findings revealed that the reduced rest times between trucks in the platoon configuration reduce the recovery time of the asphalt layers, increasing the fatigue damage to the pavement at high temperature conditions. This underlines the need for further research to allow the proper implementation of truck platoons. For example, research is needed to define strategies to make truck platoon configurations more pavement-friendly and analyze the costs associated with the changes in the required road maintenance/rehabilitation treatments, among others.

Role of Technological Innovations in Improving Manufacturing Resilience in the Post-Covid Era

Technological progress is critical for improving manufacturing resilience and achieving self-sufficiency in any nation. The COVID-19 crisis has shown the importance of, as well as the threats associated with, our new industrial processes. Manufacturing's critical position in both industrialized and emerging economies has been shown by shortages of medical supplies and disruptions in basic goods. These delays and market fluctuations have also highlighted the pitfalls of focusing solely on a globalized distribution system characterized by fragmented supply chains, the separation of engineering and manufacturing, and just-in-time production. Although globalisation was the trend before the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries realized the dangers and began to look inward, focusing on developing local manufacturing capacities. In addition, the automotive sector has established itself as a cornerstone of post-COVID-19 recovery strategies.

Ergonomic culture level in managers and supervisors in manufacturing centers

The purpose of the following project is to measure the level of ergonomic culture of a manufacturing company that is dedicated to the development of cables, fiber optics, cabling systems and related services for the automotive sector and cable systems; To carry out this study, the ergonomic culture questionnaire in work centers (CCE-T) was used as a tool and it was applied to a sample of 26 people between supervisors and managers. This questionnaire made it possible to measure the level of development of ergonomic culture in work centers from the perspective of supervisors and senior management (managers) and to know their perception of the development and application of ergonomics in their company. Therefore,

Predictive Maintenance in the Automotive Sector: A Literature Review

With the rapid advancement of sensor and network technology, there has been a notable increase in the availability of condition-monitoring data such as vibration, temperature, pressure, voltage, and other electrical and mechanical parameters. With the introduction of big data, it is possible to prevent potential failures and estimate the remaining useful life of the equipment by developing advanced mathematical models and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. These approaches allow taking maintenance actions quickly and appropriately. In this scenario, this paper presents a systematic literature review of statistical inference approaches, stochastic methods, and AI techniques for predictive maintenance in the automotive sector. It provides a summary on these approaches, their main results, challenges, and opportunities, and it supports new research works for vehicle predictive maintenance.

Sequel outcome of automobile sector on account of covid – 19 through technical analysis

The COVID – 19 pandemic has deteriorated multiple facets of the stable functioning of economies of most countries. Social restrictions associated with the immediate response to the pandemic has curtailed dynamic functioning of many industries that buttress the economic development of countries. Performance of automotive industries was expected to nosedive following the travel restrictions. One of the major sources of profit for the automotive industries in India is their consumer base in countries like U. K, Germany, and China etc. Severity of the pandemic in these countries entailed trade regulations that propelled a negative trend in the market growth of Indian automotive industries. But the economy of automotive sector of India was saved from a free fall by the countering effect of the domestic demand in private transportation. This paper presents the technical analysis on the Maruti Suzuki Private Limited to measure the stock movement of the Automobile sector in the Indian Stock Market.

Distribution of new cars – no longer an issue for EU competition law?

Distribution cartels in the automotive sector used to be frequently dismantled and sanctioned by the European Commission and the EU Courts still some 15 years ago. In recent years, however, only a few cases have been reported at the national level of EU Member States. Is it because the distribution of new cars really ceased to be a competition problem as the European Commission declared when it removed this part of the automotive business from the specific Block Exemption Regulation for the automotive sector in 2010? The purpose of the present analysis is first to inspect the car distribution cases that emerged in the EU after the year 2000 and, second, to speculate somewhat whether new forms of distribution, brought by the digitalization of marketing and sales, cannot bring about also new risks to cartel agreements and other types of distortions of competition in car sales.