ArvinMeritor Exhaust Tunes Up ‘R&I’

ArvinMeritor Exhaust Systems is the world’s largest automotive exhaust supplier, active in 17 countries on five continents, entirely on the strength of its light-vehicle products. So far.
A year after the merger of Arvin Industries and Meritor Automotive, the Michigan-based company’s exhaust business unit secured its first truck contract-to develop and supply as many as 35,000 full exhaust systems to a major European manufacturer for an unnamed new truck set to debut next year.

Through its joint venture with German OEM exhaust specialist Zeuna Starker (Arvin purchased 49% of the company in 1998) and its own domestic heavy-duty connections through the Meritor side, the company is well situated to be a strong heavy-duty player both here and abroad. Zeuna Starker has supplied diesel particulate filters to German truck-maker M.A.N. for the last 10 years, and with European diesel emissions standards set to get tougher in 2005, and then again in 2008 (when they’ll match U.S. EPA 2007 standards approximately), the business opportunity-and technological challenge-is as big there as it on this side of the Atlantic.

The company recently formed a Research and Innovation (“R & I”) group to identify product opportunities inside and outside transportation markets, including vehicle weight-reduction products, 42-volt electronics, hybrid and fuel-cell motive power, and electronic mufflers.

Among the more interesting of these is the latter, which involves a partnership with NASA (the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to develop high-temperature electronic noise-cancellation technology. Until now, loudspeaker technology to address the demanding environment of a vehicle exhaust system has been hindered by operating temperatures, durability, and excessive electrical power requirements.

“Although electronic mufflers are not widely used in automotive applications today, this technology breakthrough increases our opportunities to provide this system on cars and trucks in the future,” says Stinson.

In an electronic muffler system, sensors in the exhaust system sense the pattern of exhaust sound waves. Information is then sent to an on-board computer that controls loudspeakers in the muffler. The computer operates the loudspeakers to generate sound waves that oppose (anti-noise) and cancel the original exhaust sound waves produced by the engine.

The more durable speakers were originally developed for advanced aerospace vehicle concepts by NASA researchers.