Automotive engine testing - Technical and economic roles

Heat engine tuning enables us to define the optimum adjustments to be made to the definitions provided by the design departments. Various types of test are required to carry out this work, and test benches are needed to perform them. These are increasingly complex and expensive machines, and their operating costs call for maximum automation.

Tests are used, among other things, to qualify the performance of components or complete engines. One of the benefits is to have an exhaustive view of the complete engine performance field, so that the teams involved in tuning the engine in the vehicle can qualify the influence of a setting on the measurements obtained, when tuning according to standardized anti-pollution cycles, for example.

Another benefit is to validate simulation calculation codes and enable correlation between values obtained during testing and theoretical values obtained by calculation. The values obtained during tests require accreditation of the measuring equipment to ensure the validity of the measured values.

Test results can be used to enrich databases, thereby ultimately reducing the amount of testing required to obtain a final product that complies with various requirements.

The set of tests to be carried out for a given objective must be optimized using experimental designs.

All these criteria help reduce engine development times, which is the main focus of engine engineers' work.