Validation of Vehicle Fuel Consumption

The state of environmental degradation demands that factors contributing to it be looked into. A chief cause of environmental degradation is exhaust emissions from vehicles, especially passenger cars. This paper attempts to quantify the relationship between vehicle fuel emissions and the various factors that contribute to it such as speed, acceleration, throttle position etc. The central contention was to come up with anempirical correlation that could be used to reliably tabulate the fuel consumption of a passenger vehicle. The derivation of an empirical correlation between vehicle fuel consumption and the factors contributing to it would allow an optimisation of vehicle fuel consumption to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Using a comparison of different driving cycles, the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) was taken as the basic framework for testing. The research was carried out in two different phases i.e. laboratory testing and real life drive tests. Laboratory testing was utilised to generate the major parameters that affected vehicle fuel consumption. This was then used to derive an empirical correlation that was then tested in the field to determine its validity. The proposed empirical correlation was tested against real life driving conditions which proved the reliability of the empirical correlation.
A number of different driving conditions were simulated including urban driving, extra urban driving and highway driving. The varied testing scheme ensured that the empirical correlation was valid for various driving situations at the same time. The derivation of such an empirical correlation through this work removed one of the chief defects of different driving cycles which was the lack of standardisation for testing. With the application of this tested model it would be easier and convenient to control pollution considerably through additional research in the future.