Reproducing Real World Emission Tests with a Traffic Simulator

This investigation analyzes the feasibility of using a traffic simulator, and in particular the open source software SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility) to reproduce speed profiles acquired under Real Driving Emission (RDE) tests. The first step of the investigation describes the experimental tests performed in Lecce to obtain RDE cycles with a Class3b vehicle. Several tests are executed with the same vehicle over the same route with the same driver. The plots of Relative Positive Acceleration versus vehicle obtained in these tests are used to tune and validate SUMO together with the qualitative speed time histories and emissions of carbon dioxide. The experimental tests also revealed the possibility to correlate CO₂ emissions with either the specification of the cycle (speed and acceleration of the vehicle) or the engine working points (load and speed). This means that the proposed traffic simulator tool has the potentiality to be used for the estimation and minimization of CO₂ emissions over RDE driving conditions in conventional and advanced power systems. However, the preliminary results shown in this paper reveal that SUMO needs a fine tuning and some improvements before being used for this scope.