Analysis of energy efficiency and dynamics during car acceleration

In this work, the authors focused on analyzing the energy efficiency and dynamics during car acceleration, featuring investigation of acceleration dynamics under various acceleration intensities. The tests were performed in the speed range between 45 km/h and 120 km/h, at a constant gear ratio. This enabled obtaining variable dynamic parameters of the acceleration process, ranging from about 0.1 to 1.4 m/s², and recording variation in fuel consumption from 6.28 to 27.03 dm³/100km. The study focused on determining the relation between fuel consumption, energy efficiency and vehicle acceleration depending on the available drivetrain power. The relation between fuel consumption and vehicle acceleration was described by using the dynamic index. The proposed dynamic index takes into account the energy (from burned fuel) and vehicle acceleration intensity to obtain an objective metric for characterizing the acceleration process. The aforementioned index takes the form of the passenger car movement energy quality index and can be related to widely known physical properties, thus ensuring its universality. The index expresses the energy expenditure within the time needed to accelerate a vehicle weighing 1kg by a 1m distance. As opposed to other criteria that are applied to the assessment of passenger cars dynamics, the index shows a high determination coefficient R2 in excess of 0.99, and can be used as a universal metric to test other vehicle types.