Testing of the vehicles
A range of tests has been agreed and defined with the purpose of testing the fulfillment of the expected impacts of the project. For this purpose, LONGRUN looks to perform Engine testing as well as Powertrain bench tests, Coast down tests, Air drag tests, PEMS emissions tests, On-road Fuel consumption tests, Chassis dyno tests, NVH tests, and Smart & connected strategies evaluations. It is important to determine accurately the improvement on fuel economy, emissions and energy savings obtained from the different technological innovations that will be developed in the project, both at engine and vehicle level, including engine improvements (air management, combustion, friction, downsizing), 48V electrification (e-turbo, WHR), hybridization (P2 and P4 architectures), alternative fuels, advanced vehicle connectivity and energy management strategies and aerodynamic improvements.
The joint work of IDIADA and JRC specifies generic and transversal methods that could be applied to the baseline and demonstrator vehicles independently of the powertrain topology, fuel and innovations developed in the LONGRUN project. Additionally, the main KPI’s and targets to be fulfilled during the validation, verification and independent assessment for the different test cases based on the project objectives.
For each OEM, different architecture topologies are developed to demonstrate different innovations both at engine and vehicle level. The selected innovations will be implemented into demonstrators with a targeted maturity level of TRL 7 (system prototype demonstration in operational environment). In total, three engines/drivelines, two long distance coaches and three long haulage tractor units are going to be built by the partner OEM’s.The engines and vehicles demonstrators will be assessed by specific tests on the engine/powertrain test bench, on the test track, chassis dynamometer and on the open road. The test programme is designed based on the use cases defined in LONGRUN project, and the performance of the demonstrators is expected to be compared with the benchmark, i.e. the best in class conventional vehicles of 2018 of the involved OEMs.The purpose of the test matrix is to assess and validate the performance of the drivelines, engines and vehicles in terms of (peak thermal) engine efficiency, energy consumption, CO2, pollutant emission such as NOx, CO and hydrocarbon emissions, other (unregulated) emissions and noise in urban zones. For this, a set of KPIs are defined for each demonstration, in line with the set call targets and the overall project objectives.