Engine Test Beds - Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow

The development of the test bed technology during the last 20 years has been characterized by the requirements of engine development as well as the needs of the market and was supported to a great extent by developments in parallel in the field of electronics and computer technique.

Concepts for automatic engine test beds have to correspond to the development of engines and engine components in many different ways in order to guarantee that the test bed is available as a useful tool for specific applications.

This paper will discuss the merits of such tools used in automated engine test beds. One tool is the use of vehicle driver and road load simulation for R&D work used in parallel with chassis dynamometers. Another is the use of automated optimization of engine management system performance using software tools and finally the instrumentation of „intelligent” automated test procedures designed to cope with unexpected events such as power failure during endurance tests or the creation of fully automated engine mapping procedures.