The Development of a Drive and Duty Cycle for a Refuse Truck in the City of Hamilton using Non-Invasive Sensors

A non-invasive approach to develop drive and duty cycles for a refuse truck operating in the City of Hamilton has been proposed in this paper. The purpose of this paper is to provide the necessary background to prepare, obtain and process on-board diagnostic and GPS data to create suitable drive and duty cycles for the purpose of vehicle modelling and refuse truck trend analysis. Vehicle modelling will allow rapid simulations of new state-of-the-art powertrain technologies in a refuse truck environment and expedite the advancement towards more efficient trucks. The methodology towards the duty cycle development differs from the works of literature, as the load of the hydraulic system is considered as a function of engine power. The paper concludes with data analysis results and the presentation of a generated drive and duty cycle sample for both urban and rural routes.