Question

1. The Eco-Marathon is an annual competition sponsored by Shell Oil, in which participants build special vehicles to achieve the highest possible fuel efficiency. The Eco-Marathon is held around the world with events in the United Kingdom, Finland, France, Holland, Japan, and the United States.
A world record was set in the Eco-Marathon by a French team in 2003 called Microjoule with a performance of 10,705 miles per gallon. The Microjoule runs on ethanol. Write a MATLAB program to determine how far the Microjoule will travel in kilometers given a user-specified amount of ethanol, provided in units of grams. For your test case, you may assume that the user provides 100 grams of ethanol. The specific gravity of ethanol is 0.789.


Answer 1

Given that , Mileage of vehicle = 10705 miles/gallon

mass of fuel as m = 100 gms of ethanol = 0.1 kg of ethanol

specific gravity = 0.789

density of fuel= specific gravity X density of water = 0.789 X 1000 kg / m^3 = 789 kg / m^3

Volume of fuel stored in the vehicle in m^3 = m / d = 1.267 X 10-4 m3

Since 1m^3 = 264.172 gallons

Hence volume of fuel in gallons = 1.267 X 10-4 X 264.172 = 0.0335 gallons

Distance covered by the vehicle in miles, = Mileage of vehicle X volume of fuel in gallons

= 10705 X 0.0335 = 358.42 miles

Distance covered by the vehicle in kilometres = (distance in miles) X 1.609

= 358.42 X 1.609km = 567.7 km