Search for rational ratio of maximum speed and minimum fuel consumption of the vehicle

The gear ratio of the final drive and the distribution of the vehicle mass along the axles has a great influence on the technical and operational parameters of the vehicle. The article discusses the use of mathematical modelling in the MATLAB Simulink and the planning of the experiment to identify the optimal values of the final drive ratio and the mass distribution along the axles when driving a vehicle on a horizontal reference surface. A computational model for determining the moment of resistance on the wheels is developed when the vehicle moves along a supporting surface without slopes. The roughness and unevenness of the surface were not taken into account in the above model. The response function is obtained by studying the dependence of change in two parameters: the speed and fuel consumption of the car from two factors of variation: the final drive ratio and the mass distribution along the axles. The steep ascent method is used to determine the optimal parameters of the vehicle design, which allow achieving maximum speed with minimum fuel consumption when the vehicle is moving on a horizontal supporting surface