Environmental Testing of Large Components

Abstract: As the industry is being reshaped concentrically around sustainability, the consumption of fossil fuels is targeted to decrease day by day. As a consequence of that, a righteous rise of electricity as energy source prevails in different branches of industry. It results for electric vehicle components to increase in size and weight which in fact were relatively smaller on conventional fossil fuel driven vehicles e.g. trucks. Every component weighing more than two kilograms is classified as a large component by Scania and these large electric components uncovers the need of evaluation of established testing methods in terms of their validity. This thesis project was carried out at Scania, Södertälje, and deals with the investigation on vibration testing methods that are currently used in different fields of engineering and identification of potentially applicable ones at Scania in testing large components. A case study on the stiffness of an individual component is performed to assess its impact on alteration of eigenfrequencies. Few case studies based on empirical tests as well as finite element method simulations on certain large components, i.e. high voltage junction box and battery packs, are performed with respect to their vibration behaviours while undergoing Scania’s established vibration testing spectra. Investigation into the vibration behaviour on dependence on measurement locations were performed. Additionally, rudimentary case studies are conducted on thermal loads during vibration testing, thermal dwell time, and required energy to oscillate large components at certain levels. How thermal features of the component are affected due to its size is noted.