Quantifying fuel-saving benefit of low-rolling-resistance tyres from heavy goods vehicle in-service operations

Abstract

It is important to understand real-world performance of fuel-saving technologies for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). This paper concerns applying data mining to quantify the fuel-saving benefit of a low-rolling-resistance (LRR) tyre using in-service operational data. Two HGVs of the same specification were employed, with one using LRR tyres and the other conventional tyres. A smartphone-based data logger was developed to collect data from the HGVs’ operations on publics roads for three months. Data from vehicle Controller Area Network, smartphone sensors, weather and elevation databases were collected. A data mining methodology was developed to mine data segments representing dynamically similar driving conditions between the two HGVs, and compare their fuel consumption rates through fitting data to a theoretical vehicle fuel consumption model. It was found that at a 95% confidence level the LRR tyres exclusively brought about a fuel-saving benefit between 6.89% and 8.37% in typical UK motorway driving conditions.