The commercial vehicle industry faces new challenges like the upcoming carbon-dioxide (CO2) legislation in Europe and tightened regulatory program in the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). In Addition growing costs and globally rising transport volume are increasing the pressure on vehicle manufacturers to find the optimum powertrain and gearbox setup for heavy-duty (HD) vehicles. New technologies like natural gas engines and hybridization lead to a fast evolving diversification of the powertrain design. The introduced methodology allows the user a fast and post priori based decision making on the optimum powertrain setup, according to the energy carrier and storage technology. The strategy for finding the optimum powertrain design includes the visualization of the powertrain components. Furthermore, the optimization and assembly process is automated in a Matlab®/ Catia® Co-Simulation tool. After the optimization in Matlab, the powertrain configuration, according to the evaluation criteria, is assembled automatically in a Digital Mock Up (DMU), based on a component library with generic sizing.
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