Relationship between On-Road Vehicle Emissions and Gear Switching

Recent studies on real-world vehicle emissions measurements have not adequately addressed the question of how driving behavior especially gear changing affects emission levels. In this paper, by using an on-board emission system second by second emissions were monitored for a vehicle driven by two drivers under real traffic conditions in Birmingham near motorway junction M42. The data used for the study was collected using EURO III emission standard 2003 model Ford Mondeo 2.0L instrumented probe vehicle equipped with Horiba On Board emission measurement system OBS-1300. Results show that CO emission peak appears before the exact gear changing point and CO emission average level increases 4.4 times when gear position changes from 1 to 2. Similarly, CO increases 1.3 times when the driver switch gear position from 2 to 3, 8.4 times when gear position changes from 3 to 4 and 6.9 times when gear position changes from 4 to 5. This may be helpful for extended study of the influence on vehicle emission of driving behavior using driver simulator system.