Investigation of Modified Profile of Heavy Commercial Vehicle to Prune Aerodynamic Drag
| Author(s) | : | D. M. Ekade, C. V. Patil |
| Institution | : | Department of Mechanical Engineering Shri Sant Gajanan Maharaj College of Engineering Shegaon |
| Published In | : | Vol. 2, Issue 12 — December 2015 |
| Page No. | : | 125-130 |
| Domain | : | Engineering |
| Type | : | Research Paper |
| ISSN (Online) | : | 2348-4470 |
| ISSN (Print) | : | 2348-6406 |
The aerodynamics study for a heavy vehicles and the resulting the design changes could improve the fuelefficiency that can be substantial over a long duration, as well as the vehicle dynamics. In this study, CFD simulationsfor a truck were performed with an objective to reduce the drag coefficient. Four different configurations wereconsidered such as a rear slant from 1/3rd of the trailer length and the rear slant from 2/3rd of the trailer length from rearend and covering the gap between the tractor and trailer. The studies were performed for a speed range of 20 kmph to120 kmph to include the effects of real life scenarios. ANSYS FLUENT was chosen for the CFD simulations. ReynoldsAveraged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach was applied for this study, with Shear Stress Transport (SST) k-ω turbulencemodel was selected for the simulations. From the CFD simulations, all those three configurations provide drag reductionin comparison with the base model. Drag was reduced by ~20% when the gap between the tractor and trailer is covered.Other configurations provide drag reduction around 7% and 4% at highway speeds. The base model results were inagreement with the experimental results from the reference journal.
D. M. Ekade, C. V. Patil, “Investigation of Modified Profile of Heavy Commercial Vehicle to Prune Aerodynamic Drag”, International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD), Vol. 2, Issue 12, pp. 125-130, December 2015.
