Technical Paper
Fuel Economy Variability Investigations: From Test Cells to Real World
2017-03-28
2017-01-0894
Improving fuel economy has been a key focus across the automotive industry for several years if not decades. For heavy duty commercial vehicles, the benefits from minor gains in fuel economy can lead to significant savings for fleets as well as owners and operators. Additionally, the regulations require vehicles to meet certain GHG standards which closely translate to vehicle fuel economy. For current state of the art fuel economy technologies, incremental gains are so miniscule that measurements on the vehicle are inadequate to quantify the benefits. Engineers are challenged with high level of variability to make informed decisions. In such cases, highly controlled tests on Engine and Powertrain dynamometers are used, however, there is an associated variability even with these tests due to factors such as part to part differences, deterioration, fuel blends and quality, dyno control capabilities and so on.