Urban transportation significantly contributes towards the rapid deterioration of air quality in the Indian cities. Growing affordability has resulted in an increased two wheeler population across India. The Indian government has instituted introduction of emission legislation in phases to mitigate the impact on environment due to the increased growth. As a signatory to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE) Global Technical Regulation (GTR)-2, the Worldwide Harmonized Motorcycle Test cycle (WMTC) will be adopted as a standard test cycle for emission assessment beginning 2016. This cycle development was based on the collection and analysis of driving behavior data and statistical information about motorcycles used in three different regions (Europe, Japan and USA).
To understand the relevance in the context of driving patterns found in the India, the team developed a city specific drive cycle which involved logging on-road vehicle data from several trips and dividing them into a database of microtrips. Using a customized script on MATLAB, these microtrips were first segregated into different classes based on maximum speed attained. Minimum error criteria for different parameters such as average speed, average acceleration, average deceleration, percentage acceleration, percentage deceleration, percentage idle and percentage cruise were applied to select the microtrips from each class. A concatenation of these individual microtrips resulted in a city specific drive cycle which incorporates the urban driving pattern of the city of Bengaluru. During the process of data logging, evaluation and scripting, the team also developed a standard procedure to simplify repeating such an exercise at other urban locations.
The Bengaluru Motorcycle Drive Cycle (BMDC) evolved using the above method attempts to represent varied traffic patterns and driving behavior providing an insight into speed, acceleration, cruising and idling modes.
In line with the WMTC, a reduced BMDC was also generated using acceleration profiles of low-powered motorcycles. A comparison between BMDC and WMTC was carried out on a chassis dynamometer to assess the impact on exhaust emissions, fuel consumption and several other parameters.