Ground vehicles, from powertrain to crash structure.
11 topics · 14 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Gas, Gasoline and Oil Engines
Gardner D. Hiscox · 1900
Explains the internal combustion engine as it was actually being built at the turn of the century — ignition timing, valve gear, carburetion — for…
+1 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Changing Approach to the Epidemiology, Prevention, and Amelioration of Trauma: The Transition to Approaches Etiologically Rather Than Descriptively Based
William Haddon Jr. · 1968
Reframes crash injury as an engineering-controllable energy-transfer problem and sets out ten generic countermeasure strategies, the framework…
+8 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals
John B. Heywood · 1988
Rebuilds engine engineering on thermodynamic first principles — combustion chemistry, gas exchange, pollutant formation — and became the standard…
+2 more at this level
12 of 14 works
Gardner D. Hiscox
Explains the internal combustion engine as it was actually being built at the turn of the century — ignition timing, valve gear, carburetion — for the mechanic who had to maintain one, not just theorise about it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026United States Environmental Protection Agency
Traces vehicle emissions control from uncontrolled tailpipes through catalytic converters and onboard diagnostics, arguing regulation forced the specific engineering solutions rather than the other way round.
link checked 17 Sept 2026William Haddon Jr.
Reframes crash injury as an engineering-controllable energy-transfer problem and sets out ten generic countermeasure strategies, the framework vehicle and product-safety engineering still designs against.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Argues that for a range-limited electric vehicle, aerodynamic drag is not a refinement but a primary design variable, and works through wind-tunnel-tested shapes that cut it substantially.
link checked 17 Sept 2026United States Department of Transportation
Finds early antilock brakes cut some crash types but produced no overall reduction in fatal crash involvement — an uncomfortable early data point in the argument over whether a safety technology performs as engineered once ordinary drivers use it.
National Research Council
Assesses two decades of US fuel-economy regulation and concludes it measurably reduced vehicle weight, forcing engineers to trade fuel efficiency against crash safety rather than achieving both freely.
United States Department of Energy
Sets explicit 2022 cost and performance targets for electric vehicle batteries, motors and charging, treating vehicle electrification as an engineering roadmap with numbers attached rather than a research aspiration.
R. Krishnakumar (NPTEL, IIT Madras)
Builds a vehicle's handling behaviour up from tyre mechanics, treating the contact patch as the one interface every other subsystem — suspension, steering, braking — is ultimately designed around.
link checked 17 Sept 2026NPTEL-NOC IITM
Treats a vehicle as coupled subsystems — powertrain, transmission, brakes, suspension — and shows that the tyre contact patch is the constraint every one of them is ultimately designed against.
link checked 17 Sept 2026David Smith et al. (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
Argues the battery and motor technology that works for passenger electric vehicles does not transfer directly to trucks and buses, and maps where duty cycle, weight and charging infrastructure still block electrification.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Ramkumar P (NPTEL, IIT Madras)
Works through automobile gearbox, clutch and brake design as one weight- and heat-constrained problem, from ray diagrams and gear material selection to the thermal analysis that sizes a brake.
John B. Heywood
Rebuilds engine engineering on thermodynamic first principles — combustion chemistry, gas exchange, pollutant formation — and became the standard graduate text against which every later engine design is checked.