STUDY AND SIMULATION OF THE FUEL CONSUMPTION OF A VEHICLE WITH RESPECT TO AMBIENT TEMPERATURE AND WEATHER CONDITIONS

The consumption of fuel in vehicles depends on many factors such as the state of the roads, the state of the engine and the driver’s behavior. A mathematical model for evaluating vehicle fuel consumption on a 100 km interval at standard operating weather conditions was developed. This mathematical model developed took into consideration many factors, but the main factors were those related to weather conditions and temperature. Here a new simulation program for determining the influence of temperature and weather conditions on fuel consumption is built using the software Matlab. For efficient simulations the model uses a set of data for an SUV and then makes varying only the parameters that are related to weather and temperature for the simulation. During the simulation process, a set of 10 vehicle models and 8 roads conditions were chosen to run down the simulations and only the parameters of temperature, the drag coefficient and coefficient of rolling resistances respectively were subjected to variations during each of the simulations. Upon simulation, different results were obtained for the different parameters considered. For every 15% drop in temperature, 0.1litre, 0.12litre and 0.04litre increase in fuel consumption for the set of parameters chosen was noticed. These results were analyzed and interpreted with the help of Microsoft Excel and were found to be satisfactory given that it permits manufacturers and car users to have a notion of the impact of ambient temperature and weather conditions on fuel consumption, thereby promoting optimum usage of fuel, hence reducing the effect of greenhouse emissions in the atmosphere.