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Exhaust emissions from a vehicle under road driving condition is affected by the control state of ECU (Engine Control Unit). This control state highly depends on the driving force of the vehicle. The driving force is nearly equal to the driving resistance, which is the sum of the acceleration resistance, the air resistance, the rolling resistance and the gradient resistance. Although it is essential to take an accurate measurement of the road gradient, it is quite difficult to evaluate the gradient resistance in testing on-road driving. In this study, the measurement methods of the road gradient and the altitude with GPS, gyro sensor and height sensor are reported. The road gradient under the on-road driving condition is evaluated by the combination of measuring the pitch angle with the gyro sensor and measuring the vehicle gradient with the two height sensors. Verifying of this method, the altitude of the driving test route is also evaluated.

For the evaluation of environment load from vehicles under road driving condition, on-board measurement system with the ability to measure emission concentration, engine conditions and vehicle conditions is necessary. These days, with the advancement of measurement technology, on-board exhaust gas analyzers have been developed, and it is now possible to measure the volume emission of exhaust gas using these analyzers. However, it is important to evaluate the mass emission from vehicles. For the conversion from the volume emission to the mass emission, the value of exhaust flow rate is required. However, the measurement method of exhaust flow rate with high accuracy has not been established. In this study, the measurement method of exhaust gas flow rate, the Map Method, was investigated for gasoline vehicles.

Exhaust emissions behavior from a vehicle under road driving condition is affected by a driving force of a vehicle. It is impossible to measure the driving force by an existing torque meter under this on-road driving condition. This study reports the development and verification of the wheel torque meter which is possible to measure driving force under the on-road driving condition and has enough strength and accuracy. The wheel torque meter developed in this study consists of a torque detector with a strain gauge type torque transducer, a telemeter receiver and a data logger. The strain gauge type torque transducer is equipped between hub and wheel at the drive axle tire, because of the narrow width of this transducer, and it is possible to be placed against vehicle without significant conversion of the vehicle. Because of these characters, this transducer is possible to be used for an on-road driving vehicle.