[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by jyl

There's obviously more controls to the CU procedure than are described in the single summary paragraph. I think you can assume the testing is designed by engineers who thought of everything you have thought of and more. Is it as repeatable as dyno testing - surely not. However, you don't test airplanes on a dyno, and yet manage to get reasonably valid data.

The thing with the EPA testing is that the auto companies know the procedure in considerable detail. So they could, hypothetically, design to the test. In this day and age, program software to the test. Do they . . .

For aerospace we repeat the exact same test conditions multiple times on a fully instrumented aircraft, with a team watching the test parameters real-time via telemetry. Test conditions are very rigid, and it's not unusual to throw out more than half of the conditions because they don't meet the criteria. We strive to utilize the same pilot for a given set of data to maintain consistency. Allowable weather conditions are also strictly controlled not only from a go/no-go perspective but also in real time, with actual measured weather conditions being recorded for each performed test condition. Ultimately all of the retained test conditions are normalized for the actual measured weather conditions. So yeah, I'm a little anal about this stuff.