Abstract
An accurate determination of the fuel consumption during road tests on industrial vehicles is often required to properly judge the effectiveness of the modifications applied to the engine, cab, frame or other devices. But the volumetric capacity meter (tank method), VCM, normally mounted on board of the vehicles, does not give the necessary accuracy to identify the real effect of the modifications. An alternative procedure is proposed, which consists of detecting some relevant quantities in the crankshaft, propeller shaft, and other devices (fan, alternator, pumps, etc) on board of the vehicle, and computing the total power consumed by them and hence supplied by the engine. From this value the instantaneous fuel consumption is determined by a map of specific consumption (fuel consumption per produced power, as a function of rotation speed and torque) and finally the total consumption in the travel. The results of a first series of tests put much better into evidence the difference between test conditions then the VCM. An uncertainty estimation gives the expected uncertainty as a function of the original uncertainty of the detected data.