Reduced Fuel Consumption of Heavy-Duty Vehicles using Pulse and Glide

Sammanfattning: The transport sector always strive towards reduced fuel consumption for heavydutyvehicles. One promising control strategy is to use Pulse and Glide. Themethod works by acceleration to a high speed and then glide in neutral gear to alow speed.Two different control strategies and four different glide options were investigated.The two strategies were either to follow the optimal BSFC-line or using optimalcontrol. For each strategy, different velocity spans between the upper and lowervelocity were tested.The results show that the fuel consumption can be reduced up to 8.1 % comparedto a constant speed driving strategy. The fuel consumption was reduced the mostfor lower velocities and if the difference between the upper and lower velocity forthe Pulse and Glide strategy was kept small. The fuel saving can be explaineddue to increased engine efficiency during the pulse. The results also show thatthe difference between the rule-based and optimization based control strategy issmall. It can be concluded that a near-optimal strategy for a heavy-duty vehicleutilizing Pulse and Glide is to always pulse on the optimal BSFC-line.