Development of Representative Vehicle Drive Cycles for Hybrid Applications 2014-01-1900

Computer simulation is commonly used to determine the impact of hybrid vehicle technology on fuel economy and performance. One input required for this approach is a drive cycle that represents the desired vehicle speed at each time step in the simulation. Due to computational hardware limitations, simulated drive cycle durations are required to be shorter than those actually driven by real vehicles. Hence there is a need to develop a representative drive cycle of smaller time duration. For example, it is desirable to develop a one hour drive cycle that can give the same fuel economy and performance results as a drive cycle spanning many weeks. Specifically for the design of hybrid systems, it is desired that certain characteristics of micro-trips within the full length cycle are well replicated in the representative cycle. Taking these requirements into account, a new methodology was developed and tested. This paper explains this methodology and the final results obtained.