Class-8 Heavy Truck Duty Cycle Project Final Report

Abstract

The Heavy Truck Duty Cycle Project (HTDC) is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy�s (DOE�s) Office of Vehicle Technologies. It involved efforts to collect, analyze and archive data and information related to Class-8 heavy-truck operation in real-world highway environments. Such data and information is useful to support technology evaluation efforts, and to provide a means of accounting for real-world driving performance within heavy truck analyses. The Project was led by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, involved three industry partners (Dana Corporation of Kalamazoo, Michigan; Michelin Americas Research Company of Greenville, South Carolina; and Schrader Trucking of Jefferson City, Tennessee), and supports the Argonne National Laboratory with regard to Class-8 data and information for the development and evaluation of their Powertrain Systems Analysis Toolkit (PSAT). The Project was conducted in three phases. The conduct of the Phase 1 Pilot Test activities allowed the research team to be better prepared for the conduct of the Field Operational Test (FOT) in both the analysis of the data generated and in envisioning capabilities for providing tools for generating custom duty cycle profiles and information. Phase 1 efforts were initiated in early FY2005 and concluded in March 2006. Phase 2 was initiated in April 2006, and concluded in September 2007. Phase 2 involved the development of the FOT sensor suite and the instrumentation of six long-haul heavy trucks. Phase 3 was a seven-month effort which began in October 2007 and concluded in April 2008. Major Phase 3 efforts involved the completion of the data collection efforts, completion of the prototype Duty Cycle Generation Tool (DCGenT), and the conduct of dynamometer testing. Sixty channels of data were collected at 5 Hz from six instrumented tractors and ten instrumented trailers for more than one year during the FOT. Much of the data, including fuel consumption was collected from the vehicle�s databus. Other instrumentation included a GPS system which provided three dimensional location; a real-time vehicle weight system; a weather station to obtain precipitation, wind direction and wind velocity data; and a system to collect road condition data. A data acquisition system was developed, hardened in the pilot testing, and utilized in the FOT. In addition, there was interest on the part of Michelin to collect real-world performance data related to the performance of their New Generation Single Wide-Based Tires (NGSWBTs) in comparison to standard tandem dual tires which is used predominantly in the industry. More than 200 Gigabytes of data were collected on nearly 700,000 miles of Class-8 performance. The data analyses of the collected FOT data was accomplished with regard to studying the fuel efficiencies associated with NGSWBTs vs. standard dual tires. A general comparison, an examination of the effect of payload, and a study of the effect of speed were conducted. Because of the large database, the overall results were statistically significant. Overall, the NGSWBTS outperformed the standard dual tires in every instance. Improvements in fuel economy were observed to be in the range of about 9-10% for the specific comparisons made in this study.