Road traffic seems to increase everywhere around the world. The engine technology and fuel technology are developed continuously, and legislation in different regions requires this. However, the technology is not developing rapidly enough. The amounts of emission will be problematic in many areas and countries during many years to come. That is why there is urgent need to develop different kinds of measures for managing emission amounts; in other words to increase knowledge on which engine, vehicle, road and traffic factors have influence on amounts of emissions and how much. Energy consumption and emission simulator, which is based on one of the basic laws of physics, namely Force = Mass * Acceleration (F = m*a) - in other words on vehicle kinematics - is an ideal tool for energy and emission analysis of different vehicles. The authors describe the developed tool, its features and the basic input data needed for simulation. Some results: using one engine power (376 kW), an increase of vehicle mass (from 40 to 60 t) increases the transport power (tkm/h) by 30 to 70 percent, reduces emission amounts (g/tkm) by 25 to 40 percent, but reduces average speed by 3 to 10 percent. On the other hand, an analysis of driving with engines of different power classes (177, 234 and 376 kW) indicates that reduction of engine power of heavy vehicles is not recommendable. The tool is common and it can also be used for many other analysing and optimisation purposes: e.g. selecting engine type of the vehicle used in different conditions by a bus or a road haulier company, analysing the effects on energy consumption, emission amounts, transport power, etc. of speed limits, geometry of roads, traffic lights, etc. Finally, the authors stress that legislation is needed in order that the engine map information from engine manufacturers or other sources will be available. For the covering abstract see IRRD E102946.
Abstract