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Constantly lowering emissions legislation and the fact that fuel prices have increased tremendously over recent years, have forced vehicle manufacturers to develop more and more energy-efficient vehicles. The aerodynamic drag is responsible for a substantial part of the total driving resistance for a vehicle, especially at higher velocities; thus it is important to reduce this factor as much as possible for vehicles commonly operating in these conditions. In an attempt to improve transport efficiency, longer vehicle combinations are becoming more common. By replacing some of the shorter vehicle combinations with longer combinations, the same amount of cargo can be transported with fewer vehicles; hence there is large potential for fuel savings. The knowledge of the aerodynamic properties of such vehicles is somewhat limited, and therefore interesting to study.

The aim with this investigation was to study the aerodynamic properties of truck-trailer combinations of varying lengths. The aerodynamic properties of the combinations were evaluated in order to study similarities and differences in the flow field between different configurations. By the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) six different types of truck-trailer combinations used for long hauling have been evaluated. The combinations have a total length varying between 10.10 m and 25.25 m and consist of either a tractor or rigid truck in combination with one or two cargo units. All of the combinations are commonly found on roads in Sweden and several other countries in Europe. The results from the simulations show that the aerodynamic properties differ significantly for the truck-trailer combinations. It was found that the longer vehicle combinations are much more sensitive to yaw conditions than the shorter combinations.

Today there are a large variety of drag-reducing devices for heavy trucks that are commonly used, for example, roof deflectors, cab side extenders and chassis fairings. These devices are often proven to be efficient, reducing the total aerodynamic resistance for the vehicle. However, the drag-reducing devices are usually identical for a specific pulling vehicle, independent of the layout of the vehicle combination. In this study, three vehicle combinations were analyzed. The total length of the vehicles varied between 10.10 m and 25.25 m. The combinations consisted of a rigid truck in combination with one or two cargo units. The size of the gap between the cargo units differed between the vehicle combinations. There were also three configurations of each vehicle combination with different combinations of roof deflector and cab side extenders, yielding a total number of nine configurations.