Battery Electric Vehicles and Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles are increasingly becoming more popular in recent years. Stricter regulations from government agencies to curb emissions and reduce impact on climate have led to automobile makers adopt electric powertrains. Eco-Routing is one such method to reduce energy usage in personal transport.
EcoRouting is a methodology that determines the route with the least energy consumption between two points. Standard navigation systems often determine the shortest or the fastest route, emphasizing travel time. EcoRouting considers an alternative criterion - energy consumption. In this thesis, an automation methodology is presented that determines the EcoRoute among given route alternatives based on route distance, speed limits, road grades, traffic signs, driver aggression and the powertrain.
There are three major objectives in this thesis: Developing the automation methodology for the determination of EcoRoute for use in on-board applications, validating the EcoRouting methodology on actual driving conditions and studying the impact of traffic on the choice of EcoRoute.
The automation methodology has been developed on the Android framework for use with on-board applications on Android mobile devices. The automation methodology used to conduct sensitivity studies show that factors such as driver aggression, distance and conditional stops impact energy consumption. The comparison of results of simulation using the automation methodology against results from actual driving to validate the methodology on actual driving conditions show that transient traffic conditions can have significant impact on energy consumption. Finally, route energy consumptions for various traffic conditions are estimated using simulation to understand the impact of traffic on energy consumption and EcoRoute choice. Results that are obtained show that apart from traffic affecting the energy consumption, travel times can have an impact on choice of EcoRoute. / Master of Science / Government agencies have been introducing tighter regulations in order to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions. These regulations are targeted at reducing the impact of vehicle usage on climate. Automobile manufacturers have increasingly adopted electric powertrains to meet these regulations. Battery Electric Vehicles and Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles are more popular than ever. Other methods in reducing environmental impact by automobiles are also being conducted.
EcoRouting is one such method. EcoRouting determines the route that consumes the least energy between two locations. EcoRouting requires no modifications to be done on the vehicle or its powertrain. A methodology has been developed in this thesis that takes into account various factors such as traffic signs, speed limits, road grades, powertrain and driver aggression to determine the route that consumes the least energy.
Research in this thesis has been divided into three major parts: development of the automation methodology, validating the methodology for actual driving conditions and understanding the impact of traffic on energy consumption. Results of case studies show that the input parameters affect energy consumption significantly. Traveling speeds affect the energy consumption and since transient traffic conditions can affect traveling speeds, transient traffic conditions can have a significant impact on energy consumption. Since energy consumption alone is not considered in determining the EcoRoute and the travel times are also considered so as to not inconvenience the user, traffic conditions impact the choice of EcoRoute both due to differences in energy consumption and travel time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/89537 |
| Date | 15 May 2019 |
| Creators | Mysore Shamprasad, Shreyak |
| Contributors | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Baumann, William T., Nelson, Douglas J., Zeng, Haibo |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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