This part of ISO 8178 specifies the measurement and evaluation methods for gaseous and particulate exhaust emission from reciprocating internal combustion (RIC) engines under transient conditions on a test bed, necessary for determining one value for each exhaust gas pollutant.

The specific transient test cycle covered by this part of ISO 8178 is applicable to compression-ignition engines for mobile use with a power output between 37 kW and 560 kW, excluding engines for motor vehicles primarily designed for road use. This part of ISO 8178 may be applied to engines used in off-road vehicles and diesel powered off-road industrial equipment as described in 8.3.1.3 of ISO 8178-4. This includes e.g. engines for construction equipment including wheel loaders, bulldozers, crawler tractors, crawler loaders, truck-type loaders, off-highway trucks, hydraulic excavators, agricultural equipment, self propelled agricultural vehicles (including tractors), forestry equipment, fork lift trucks, road maintenance equipment and mobile cranes.

Many of the procedures described below are detailed accounts of laboratory methods, since determining an emissions value requires performing a complex set of individual measurements, rather than obtaining a single measured value. Thus, the results obtained depend as much on the process of performing the measurements as they depend on the engine and test method.