“Automotive industry in India is driving ahead basically with three mantras, viz., safety, lightweight and go-green. Our products are underlined with all three attributes striding in parallel with the industry. We supply belts, tensioners, idlers, pulleys, hoses and coupling to automotive and off-road applications. We are supplying these products separately or as a system based on the demand from the OEMs. These systems reduce friction, noise and improve the life. We cater to two wheeler, passenger cars, commercial vehicles and off road vehicles. Safety and light weighting lead our priority list”, summarises Mr. I. Meenakshisundaram, Director Commercial & Technical (Power Transmission). His views on the above subject follow.
Excerpts:
Complementing association
Belt systems reduce noise pollution an indirect measure of safety for our ears maintaining the audible limits. The transition from chain to belt contributes to light weight, reduces friction and increases life of the vehicles. Lightweight in the Indian and global automotive segment leads to CO2 reduction facilitating the go-green initiative. This CO2 reduction gets translated to fuel economy addressing the pain point of the automotive sector. The CAFÉ norms are expected in India by the middle of 2018 which calls for fuel economy standards to be maintained based on the fleet average weight.
Gates products are basically divided into two segments power transmission and fluid power. In power transmission, our timing belt system contributes weight reduction by replacing the chains and metal components by belts. The average savings per vehicle could be quantified between 400 and 600 grams. They also significantly contribute to reducing the drivetrain friction which in turn results in lower fuel consumption, again the same could be 3-8% based on the specific power and torque of the engine. Our fluid conveyance products which finds one of its applications in the off road segment are designed to work at tight bend radius even at high pressures helping designers to optimize the total length of the hoses. These hoses also contribute safety with Gates patented Quick-Lok couplings.
Technology impact
The industry is leap frogging to BS-VI underlining the deadline as 2020. Cost optimization should be drawn in concurrence with the quality, reliability and safety. The platform design and platform sharing facilitate the use of common parts from one engine or the vehicle family to another leading to a lot of reduction in material movement and reduced product value stream cost. The usage of our timing belt, accessory belt and tensioners leads to light weighting of the engine system. Hose products which are the prima facie required in heavy duty applications also contribute to light weight to a major extent. Significant new technology products such as hot oil belt, Alternator Isolator Decoupler (AID) reduce parasitic losses and contribute to improved fuel efficiency leading to reduced power consumption.
Extrapolating the Paris agreement and climate change, our end customers in automotive, agriculture, heavy duty truck and off highway are actively participating to reduce the carbon foot print. Regarding the material usage we would like to highlight that as a company we are involved in using lightweight aluminium for the past 10 years in our Front End Accessory Drive (FEAD) tensioners. For automotive applications like pulley bearing assembly we use extensive plastics. The plastics are highly engineered and have 70% market share in India. We further go deep dive and working on innovative manufacturing and design methodologies to reduce our aluminium content with light weight thin walled magnesium alloy castings. The reduction in weight is expected to the tune of 15-20% based on the product.
Light-weighting necessity and trend
Gates patented Stretch-Fit™ belt solutions removes the tensioner and idler from automotive applications yet provides efficient power transmission solutions with an average of 900 grams savings per FEAD system. Typically trucks would have 2 plane drives which cumulate to 1.8 kg of weight savings. Gates has successfully replaced the cast iron pulleys with aluminium and composite (carbon fibre) pulleys with patented technologies leading to 35% weight removal. This significantly improves the drivability and they are part of prestigious Harley and other street bikes.
We also successfully hold the technology of hot oil belt for engine systems as a part of light weight solutions. They are already in production in the global arena. We need to bring the same to Indian passenger car, heavy duty products as they have high strength and potential to replace the gears and chains thereby endorsing lightweight to the tune of about 20kg in a 400 nm torque engine. Interestingly the hot oil belt can replace the chain system in the motor cycle segment with no or minimum modifications. It is a fit and forget type and improves the life of the engine which in turn contributes in saving the environment by avoiding land-fill with chain scraps discounting the recycling needs.