Class-8 Heavy Truck Duty Cycle Project Final Report - Center for ...

1. PROJECT OVERVIEW
This U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Project is sponsored by the Office of Vehicle Technologies
(OVT), and involves efforts to collect, analyze and archive data and information related to heavytruck
operation in real-world highway environments. Such data and information is useful to support
technology evaluation efforts, and to provide a means of accounting for real-world driving
performance within heavy truck analyses. The Project is led by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(ORNL), involves three industry partners (Dana Corporation (Dana) of Kalamazoo, Michigan;
Michelin Americas Research Company (Michelin) of Greenville, South Carolina; and Schrader
Trucking (Schrader) of Jefferson City, Tennessee), and supports the Argonne National Laboratory
(ANL) with regard to Class-8 data and information for the development and evaluation of their
Powertrain Systems Analysis Toolkit (PSAT). Dana provided the tractor and trailer used for the Pilot
Test. Michelin provided tires for the Program in the interest of gathering data regarding the long-term
real-world performance of their New-Generation Single Wide-Based Tires (NGSWBTs) – especially
with regard to the fuel savings aspect of NGSWBTs. Schrader provided six tractors and ten trailers
for use in the Field Operational Test (FOT). The Program was conducted in three phases:
Phase 1 – Pilot Test: Efforts in this phase involved the design, evaluation, and field testing of a
duty cycle data collection system. This phase was initiated in early CY2005 and was completed
in March 2006.
Phase 2 – Field Operational Test Launch: Efforts in this phase involved identification of a
FOT fleet, fleet Instrumentation, initiation of field testing that includes initial data collection,
development of a data management system, and quality assurance and verification of the
collected data. These efforts were in direct follow-on to Phase 1 efforts and were initiated in
February 2006. Phase 2 was completed at the end of CY2006.
Phase 3 – Field Operational Test Conduction: Efforts in this phase involved continuation and
completion of the FOT, the conduct of data analyses, completion of the data management system,
development of specialized data handling tools, completion of a Duty Cycle Generation Tool
(DCGenT), and the production of a final report. These efforts were initiated in October 2006 and
were completed in April 2008.
Phase 1 was a 15-month effort that was completed in March 2006. Within Phase 1, pilot testing was
conducted to evaluate the prototype data collection system that was to be used to capture relevant
vehicle data. The data collected during the Pilot Test was analyzed and example duty cycles based on
this data were developed. The efforts engaged in during Pilot Testing were extremely valuable.
Failure to invest in pilot testing activities prior to a field test creates a strong potential for having
something go wrong during the field test. Field hardening of instrumentation or data collection
systems, familiarity with such instrumentation and systems, optimal calibration, and general pilot
testing lessons learned, protocols and procedures are ways of ensuring that once a field test has been
initiated, that down-time is kept to a minimum.
The research team obtained considerable experience with the sensors and data acquisition systems
(DASs) utilized during the pilot test. A more optimal data collection frequency rate was determined,
and attention was focused on the need for better time stamping and data synchronicity.
The handling of the enormous amount of data that was generated in the Pilot Test was discovered to
be very resource-intensive. The adjustment of data collection rates, the collection of data at the same
frequency for all performance measures, and the need to develop some automated data
handling/management tools were identified to be necessary.
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