The Open Mechanical Engineering Journal
2018, 12 : 81-94Published online 2018 April 30. DOI: 10.2174/1874155X01812010081
Publisher ID: TOMEJ-12-81
REVIEW ARTICLE
Design and Development of Power Transmission System for Green and Light Weight Vehicles:
* Address correspondence to this author at the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Tel: +251911303439; E-mail: hailuqua@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
A study on green vehicle was introduced and promoted to minimize the problem of air pollution caused by emissions of conventional vehicle. Green mobility are vehicles with low fuel/energy consumption and low/zero exhaust gas emission, these vehicles are like hybrid, battery powered, and fuel cell electric vehicle that can be enhanced to be more efficient than the conventional vehicles through a new design and development of power transmission system. Power transmission system for green and lightweight vehicles consists of different components like gear box, propeller shaft, differential and final drive. In this review more emphasis is given to gear box due to some reasons: firstly, it is one of the heaviest component of the power train system and as a result weight reduction is critically needed to increase the efficiency of the vehicle. Secondly, gearshift takes place therefore, torque interruption needs to minimize. The use of simulation software's i. e. Mat lab, AMEsim, cruise software and other similar programs can simulate high-efficiency power transmission system. The results from the simulation software will be validated by experimental tests on test rigs. One way of minimizing fuel consumption is to reduce the weight of the gearbox by 10% reduction in vehicle weight can improved fuel economy by about 5-7%. As different researchers confirm that to have high vehicle efficiency the type of the transmission they used matters. A vehicle using automated manual transmission (AMT) and dual clutch transmission is more efficient in terms of less energy loss and gearshift comfort.