Development of experimental fuel economy evaluation methodology for light commercial vehicle

Today fuel consumption reduction is one of the most relevant issues for the vehicle manufacturers. Apart from the natural ambition to make the products highly competitive on the market, they have to comply with strict emission regulations continuously tightened by governments around the world. Nowadays vehicle parameters are first evaluated via computer simulation, and then validated during the field tests. This paper presents a fuel consumption and emission model validated on the fuel economy measurement set-up developed by NNSTU specialists, which can be implemented in the vehicle and used for the tests. To enable travelling according to driving cycles, special software was designed to calculate vehicle parameters in real time, and human-machine interface was developed to inform the test driver of the input parameters. The methodology includes two types of tests performed on a dedicated proving ground: fuel consumption analysis in cruise and typical driving modes (NEDC driving cycle). In conclusion, results of methodology validation for fuel economy evaluation are presented.