Development of Real World Driving Cycle for Vehicle Durability Evaluation

Ability to meet customer expectations and understand customer usage behavior is fundamental to the delivery of the successful products in the Automobile industry. A combination of data collection tools such as customer survey and customer chasing technique with instrumented vehicle are generally used to get insight into the customer usage pattern and driving style. The available information can be priceless if it is used to tailor laboratory test standards representative of customer usage behavior. Test cycles, tailored based on specific customer usage behavior, have the potential to work as very effective design filter during the validation stage of new product design and development process. In this paper, a method to tailor vehicle level durability driving cycle on a laboratory scale roller Chassis dynamometer has been demonstrated. This cycle is developed based on the data collected with customer for their daily usage routine. Concepts of micro trips analysis, correspondence analysis, and cluster analysis have been used for derivation of representative test cycle. The effectiveness of the newly developed cycle was demonstrated in terms of the detection of failure modes of critical engine sub systems.