Two students writing on a glass whiteboard

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

Headshot of Michael J Alexander-Ramos

Michael J Alexander-Ramos

Associate Professor-Educator, CEAS - Mechanical Eng

688 Rhodes Hall

513-556-6402

Associate Professor-Educator, Mechanical Engineering
August 2023 - Present
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
University of Cincinnati

Current Members

Headshot of Thibaut Amoussougbo

Thibaut Amoussougbo

M.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering

Research interests: Automotive industries; design optimization; fuel-efficient vehicle; autonomous vehicle; manufacturing processes; entrepreneurship.

Headshot of Saeed Azad

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.

Headshot of Mustafa Bandukwala

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.

Headshot of Mohammad Behtash

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.

Headshot of Sushrut Dandawate

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

Headshot of Abhivamshi Maduri

Abhivamshi Maduri

M.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering

Research interests: Hybrid-electric vehicles; multidisciplinary design optimization; automotive systems design; autonomous vehicles; computer-aided design.

Headshot of Sushant Thotakura

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

Headshot of Gulnaaz Afzal

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

Headshot of Arian Houshmand

Arian Houshmand

M.S., Mechanical Engineering (2016)

Headshot of Sai Krishna Sumanth (Sumanth) Nakka

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.