When is it Fuel Efficient for a Heavy Duty Vehicle to Catch Up With a Platoon?

Vehicle platooning has in recent years become an important research field for the vehicle industry. By establishing a platoon of heavy duty vehicles, the fuel consumption can be reduced for the follower vehicles due to the slipstream effect. However, as vehicles are scattered on the road driving by themselves, coordination amongst the vehicles is required. In this paper we study the problem of when it is beneficial for a heavy duty vehicle to drive faster in order to catch up and join a platoon. We derive a formula, based on flat road and with no vehicle accelerations, to calculate if it is more fuel-efficient for a vehicle to drive faster and platoon or keep driving alone. Depending on the distance between the vehicles and the distance to the destination, the fuel savings vary. For a trip of 350 km, with a distance of 10 km to the vehicle ahead, the fuel saving could be up to 7 % if the follower vehicle decides to increase the speed from 80 km/h to 90 km/h in order to catch up and form a platoon, assuming an air drag reduction of 32 % when platooning. Sensitivity analysis has shown that the speeds need to be relatively accurate in order to not give any false positive catch up decisions.