|
I dunno, the total distance of the trip is about 2.4 miles... did you see the number of data points I'm working with in the Route1 file? I can visualize the entire trip and it seems fairly accurate. In a vehicle, a 10 foot inclination isn't really all that much.
I'm using what I can get my hands on for free right now, plus I'm taking this one step at a time. Its easy to sit back and dream about sensors and cameras but like DCB stated earlier, getting your hands dirty is the hard part. I'll be back to school tonight and plan on starting some of my MATLAB coding of the project. I'll be able to iterate a force through the trip at each section (i.e. use 100 N in each section, then 200 in each section, if it goes over then drop it to 150 etc.) automatically.
I'm diggin the pulse and glide method that TestDrive asked about earlier. I think since an engine's Power consists of it's force*velocity(rpm) that running the engine w/ a lot of force for a short amount of time is much better than running with little force for the entire trip.
When we accelerate, the RPMs go up but our acceleration stays the same meaning the same amount of force is coming out of the vehicle's engine though more revolutions thus more fuel is being spent. Because of gearing, the amount of force that can be applied at a particular velocity seems to be between whatever gear we are in or any gear we could downshift to... I don't even know why I'm worrying about this now. More diff. eq. and hills. I'll be searching for the least amount of energy used... that's how I'll decide the best MPG. I've stated my engine is .25 efficient so all of the energy needed is multiplied by 4 to state how much energy in fuel I've had to burn to achieve this.
|