Fuel Consumption Simulation Model of a CNG Vehicle based on Real-world Emission Measurement

This research aims at establishing a procedure to simulate the fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions of a CNG-powered vehicle from real-world mass emission measurement data.

In order not to be dependant on characteristic maps derived from test bed measurements a procedure to define an analytic function which describes the fuel consumption of the whole powertrain from real-world onboard emission measurements has been developed. This procedure involves developing a closed loop simulation program in Matlab/Simulink for driving resistances, driver behavior, powertrain and vehicle.

The simulation program calculates the fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions with around ±3% accuracy compared with real-world measurements when the vehicle is driven on significantly different types of urban routes.