Integrated Vehicle Design Laboratory
Automotive vehicle design is a challenging process that requires knowledge from a variety of disciplines, including engineering, business, policy, and industrial design. Many times these core disciplines and even their corresponding sub-disciplines have strong tradeoffs among one another, and so it becomes critical that design decisions are made in an integrated manner to account for these interactions.
In practice, this may be accomplished qualitatively through cross-disciplinary design teams. Although such approaches are both useful and necessary, they are limited since they do not explicitly address the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary interactions in a quantitatively rigorous manner.
Our mission is to complement qualitative methods for integrated vehicle design by developing and using novel, quantitative integrated design methods that can facilitate the determination of the best overall vehicle design solutions.
Faculty
Michael J Alexander-Ramos
Associate Professor-Educator, CEAS - Mechanical Eng
688 Rhodes Hall
August 2023 - Present
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
University of Cincinnati
Current Members
Thibaut Amoussougbo
M.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Research interests: Automotive industries; design optimization; fuel-efficient vehicle; autonomous vehicle; manufacturing processes; entrepreneurship.
Saeed Azad
Ph.D. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Research interests: Multidisciplinary modeling & design optimization of automotive systems; electric & hybrid-electric vehicle design; powertrain design; vehicle dynamics; crashworthiness; finite element analysis; computer-aided engineering.
Mustafa Bandukwala
M.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Research interests: Multidisciplinary design optimization; hybrid-electric ground vehicles design; hybrid-electric propulsion turbine for UAV; automotive powertrain systems design.
Mohammad Behtash
Ph.D Pre-Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Research interests: Multidisciplinary modeling & design optimization of automotive systems; electric & hybrid-electric vehicle design; powertrain design; vehicle dynamics; crashworthiness; finite element analysis; computer-aided engineering.
Sushrut Dandawate
M.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Research interests: Hybrid-electric/electric vehicle design optimization; autonomous vehicle design optimization; EV battery utilization optimization; alternative energy sources for vehicle propulsion; connected vehicle systems
Abhivamshi Maduri
M.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Research interests: Hybrid-electric vehicles; multidisciplinary design optimization; automotive systems design; autonomous vehicles; computer-aided design.
Sushant Thotakura
M.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Research interests: Multidisciplinary design optimization; hybrid-electric vehicles; vehicle powertrains; alternate energy sources for vehicle propulsion; alternate powertrain for propulsion.
Former Members
Gulnaaz Afzal
M.S. Candidate, Aerospace Engineering
Research interests: Hybrid-electric propulsion systems; electric ears; autonomous driving systems; design, manufacture, and testing of Hyperloop; battery-enabled turboprops; flight control systems; fluid mechanics; design of noise cancellation device
Arian Houshmand
M.S., Mechanical Engineering (2016)
Sai Krishna Sumanth (Sumanth) Nakka
M.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Research interests: Hybrid-electric ground vehicles design; hybrid-electric UAV design; multidisciplinary design optimization; automotive systems design.