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Focus 2013 1 E

products Fuel Consumption Measurement Engineers can Rely On Focus spoke to two AVL experts, Dr. Michael Cernusca and Rainer Schantl, who outlined how AVL has become the leading company in the world for providing the kind of high level accuracy and repeatability for fuel consumption that engineers can rely on under all test conditions. Internal combustion engines have gone through such a high level of development over many years that what now seem like relatively incremental differences in performance between engine variants can actually represent significant 3 2 F o c u s margins of improvement. Development engineers, though, need to have certainty about their measurements in order to make a true evaluation of this, which is why they need highly precise measurement tools. The confidence in terms of fuel consumption measurement that they require to make a solid judgment is based on differences of +/- 1 g/kwh in engine part load. To put this in context, an efficient modern passenger car diesel engine will require around 200-250g of fuel per kilowatt-hour of energy – at average engine load. Accuracy and good repeatability Engine developers all over the world have defined a repeatability of +/- 1g/kWh of the specific fuel consumption, especially in engine part load, as a prerequisite for efficient development & optimization of modern combustion engines (minimum number of measurements at low stabilization and measurement time).


Focus 2013 1 E
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