Evaluation of a vehicle powertrain fitness to application using driving cycle byMonte Carlo method

Automotive powertrains are designed or selected according to power demand analysis and simulations which are closely related to the vehicle driving pattern. When a car is utilized for a non-purposed application, its driving cycle is different so the design targets are not met. It results in lower efficiency, waste of resources due to over or under engineering and lack of satisfaction. In this study, a typical passenger car which is converted to a taxi is investigated for its design fitness. The driving cycle of the taxi is a combination of long modal trips which are assembled by large sets of transient microtrips. It is constructed using actual data collected by a GPS and data logger. After filtering noises by LOWESS technique, statistical distribution of the dataset is verified so that Monte Carlo method can be implemented. Based on the acceleration results of the simulation, power demands of the vehicle and duty cycles can be derived and compared to the engine characteristics. The discrepancies indicate that the design of the powertrain does not match its application.

Keywords:

Automotive powertrain , Driving cycle , Monte Carlo method , Simulation