Calibration of Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) Using Real Heavy-Duty Truck Data

Heavy duty trucks are one of the major sources of energy consumption in transportation sector. In order to reduce environmental impacts of heavy duty trucks, some strategies, such as truck platooning or mileage pricing, have been evaluated. The evaluation of the effectiveness of these strategies depends on how accurately fuel consumption is estimated. The Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) has been extensively applied to estimate environmental impacts of traffic flow including heavy duty trucks. In spite of frequent applications, there are not many studies to compare MOVES outputs with real fuel consumption data. In this study, real fuel consumption data are used to evaluate discrepancies in fuel consumption estimated by MOVES and propose a calibration model to achieve better accuracy. The study focuses on heavy duty trucks with total gross weights of 13.5, 29.5 and 50.6 metric tons during acceleration, deceleration and constant speed. Results showed that overall, MOVES overestimates fuel consumption during deceleration and constant speed. During acceleration, both underestimation and overestimation have been observed. Based on the observed trends, the study develops a calibration method to reduce the discrepancy in MOVES estimates with overall R-squared of 96%.