Cfd Investigation of a Novel Fuel-saving Device for Articulated Tractor-trailer Combinations
نویسنده
چکیده
Enhancing the aerodynamic efficiency of commercial vehicles is gaining increasing importance as it helps to reduce both overall fuel consumption as well as emissions. This paper investigates the advantages offered by a novel fuel-saving device for such vehicles. This device uses a moving surface to impart additional kinetic energy to flow near the roof surface. The additional momentum in the flow modifies the flow field, thereby significantly reducing pressure drag. Distribution of drag shows that the front and rear faces of the semi-trailer and the tractor cab are the dominant contributors to drag. The overall reduction in drag has been quantified by the distribution of pressure on the surface as well as the individual contribution to drag by each surface of the vehicle. The newly developed device has been shown to be very effective in reducing the fuel consumption of tractor-trailers.
منابع مشابه
Roll Dynamic Response of an Articulated Vehicle carrying liquids
The directional response and roll stability characteristics of a partly filled tractor semi-trailer vehicle, with cylindrical tank, are investigated in various maneuvers. The dynamic interaction of liquid cargo with the tractor semi-trailer vehicle is also evaluated by integrating a dynamic slosh model of the partly filled tank with five-degrees-of-freedom of a tractor semi-trailer tank mode...
متن کاملTractor Trailer Base Region Drag Optimization by a Genetic Algorithm with CFD
A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code has been combined with a genetic algorithm (GA) to perform a two-dimensional drag minimization on the base region of tractor trailers. Few studies have been conducted with CFD driven by a GA due to extensive run times and the general non autonomous characteristics of meshing a suitable CFD geometry. This study solves the two-dimensional Reynolds-average...
متن کاملComparative Computational Analysis of Drag-reducing Devices for Tractor-trailers
Constant rise in fuel price in recent times has caused manufacturers of heavy commercial vehicles (HCV) to turn to efficient aerodynamic design of trucks, wagons, tractors as well as trailers. The comparative analysis in this study compares the coefficient of drag of the following four aerodynamic configurations of a tractor-trailer combination: 1. Semi-trailer with no devices. 2. Semi-trailer ...
متن کاملRoll dynamics and lateral load transfer estimation in articulated heavy freight vehicles
Roll dynamics in heavy freight vehicles is characterized in driving conditions by the lateral load transfer coe cient. The coe cient tracking requires sophisticated measurement systems for assessing the wheels’ normal loading. In this paper a new recursive non-linear lateral load transfer estimator employing sensors that are already used on a vehicle in combination with additional units tha...
متن کاملTrailer Steering Control of a Tractor-Trailer Robot
In this paper, we consider active trailer steering control as a means to improve the maneuverability of (long) truck–trailer combinations during cornering. Hereto, we formulate the problem of reducing the so-called swept path width during cornering and that of eliminating unsafe tail swing of the trailer as a tracking control problem. We present a kinematic tractor–trailer model including off-a...
متن کامل