Fun to drive is one of the main driver’s wishes. Therefore, it is a relevant attribute in vehicles and fuels development. Vehicles performance depends, mainly, on ignition and fuel injection strategies adopted by their manufacturers. However, fuel characteristics may significantly influence acceleration and speed recovery results.
Regarding fuel development, it is important to establish test methodologies, which minimize experimental uncertainties. So, it is possible to detect any small acceleration or speed recovery variation and relate it to fuel characteristics changes. An alternative to traditional track tests is to perform speed recovery tests on chassis dynamometer, where it is possible to mitigate the effect of some parameters which may significantly vary on track, such as, ambient temperature, ground irregularities and wind direction and speed.
In this paper, chassis dynamometer speed recovery test methodologies are proposed and their results are compared to those obtained on track tests, using two vehicles.
Results confirmed that the new proposed methodologies represent an improvement on speed recovery tests, due to lower experimental dispersions and uncertainties. It was also measured the driver’s influence on speed recovery tests.