This study aims at a possible solution to predict the fuel consumption of heavy duty diesel trucks, particularly, the tractor semitrailer for their long haul operations using various machine learning techniques. It intends to provide a possible alternative to simulation or physics based models, which often are very complicated. The stringent laws on emission control set by the Paris Agreement and the fact that heavy duty trucks contribute to almost 27% of CO2 emissions from road transport and their dependence on diesel for operations (in long haul) makes it the need of the hour to first, have an estimate on the emissions being produced and second, to develop technologies to reduce those emissions.

This study focuses specifically on the first part i.e., estimating the amount of fuel consumed by heavy duty trucks in the European Union and thereby determine the emissions being produced. The main objective is to examine whether an approach of machine learning could be a viable option to predict fuel consumption. This thesis is part of the AEROFLEX project and was done in collaboration with TNO, which provided all the data-sets required for the study.

The idea was to explore the regime of machine learning for one time step ahead prediction of fuel consumption. Furthermore, this study also focused on the development of another model by not using any variables affected by the driver as input into the training model. This exclusion was necessary to make sure the model remained adaptive to new routes and new trucks, especially because large scale on-road testing of the newly developed trucks is impossible and also because this way would help predict the fuel consumed by a truck without the necessity of it driving on a road. The study concludes with a comparison with an existing simulation model at TNO and provide an alternative machine learning solution. It also provides a comparison between different machine learning techniques and suggest the most accurate one.

It was found that machine learning could potentially be used to predict the amount of fuel consumed by a long haul heavy duty truck driving on a motorway. It was also found that engine torque was the variable that affected the fuel consumption of the truck the most. Furthermore, Neural Network was the most potent algorithm among all the other learning techniques for both the models developed in this study with it performing better than the simulation tool by a factor of approximately 3.8 in the model where the driver/drive influenced inputs were not considered in the training data-set. The results obtained from this work at a sampling frequency of 10 Hz. (i.e., 0.1 seconds) are comparable to the ones reported by other sources at a sampling rate of 0.016 Hz. (i.e., 1 minute) or 0.0016 Hz. (i.e., 10 minutes). This goes on to say that the machine learning algorithms are also potent at much higher sampling frequencies.