As part of its technology assessment for the upcoming midterm evaluation (MTE) of the 2022-2025 Light-Duty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas (LD GHG) emissions standards, EPA has been benchmarking engines and transmissions to generate inputs for use in its Advanced Light-Duty Powertrain and Hybrid Analysis (ALPHA) model, a physics-based, forward-looking, full vehicle computer simulation tool. One of the most efficient engines today, a 2.0L Mazda SkyActiv engine, is of particular interest due to its high geometric compression ratio and use of an Atkinson cycle. EPA benchmarked the 2.0L SkyActiv at its National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions laboratory.
EPA then incorporated ALPHA into an engine dynamometer control system so that vehicle chassis testing could be simulated with a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) approach. In order to model the behavior of current and future vehicles, an algorithm was developed to dynamically generate transmission shift logic from a set of user-defined parameters, a cost function (e.g., engine fuel consumption) and vehicle performance during simulation.
This paper first presents the results of EPA’s benchmarking of a Mazda 2.0L 13:1 CR SkyActiv engine. It then details the implementation of the SkyActiv 2.0L engine in an HIL test bed to represent chassis testing of an advanced vehicle configuration, which includes assumptions for a future high-efficiency transmission and reduced vehicle road loads. The engine was operated over simulated EPA city and highway test cycles to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions performance in the context of EPA’s LD GHG standards through year 2025.