Aerodynamic Improvement of a Loaded Timber Truck 2023-01-5000
In recent years, there has been an overall reduction in greenhouse emissions in
the European Union (EU); however, that is not the case for the transport
industry where road transports are responsible for more than 70% of all the
transports emissions. Transport by trucks and busses is responsible for a fourth
of these greenhouse emissions, and a significant contributor to the energy
consumption of these vehicles is the aerodynamic drag.
A particular branch of truck transport is the transport of timber by the use of
timber trucks. A significant difference to ordinary trucks is that the load of
the timber truck affects the shape and hence its aerodynamic behavior. In
Europe, these timber trucks travel at speeds of up to 80 km/h. At this speed,
the aerodynamic drag accounts for around 20–30% per ton-km of the fuel
consumption for these vehicles.
In this paper computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to investigate and
improve the aerodynamics of a loaded timber truck. Several concepts are
evaluated for high drag regions along the truck. Yaw sweeps are done for the
concepts with large potential to ensure consistent drag reduction. The concepts
are evaluated separately and then combined into three combinations, ranging from
an easy implementable combination to maximum drag reduction, where a 27% to 51%
reduced wind-averaged drag is achieved, respectively.
Citation: Fattahi, S., Ekman, P., Karlsson, M., and Gårdhagen, R., "Aerodynamic Improvement of a Loaded Timber Truck," SAE Technical Paper 2023-01-5000, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4271/2023-01-5000. Download Citation
Author(s):
Sadegh Fattahi, Petter Ekman, Matts Karlsson, Roland Gårdhagen
Affiliated:
Linkoping University, Department of Management and, Linköping University
Pages: 13
Event:
Automotive Technical Papers
ISSN:
0148-7191
e-ISSN:
2688-3627
Related Topics:
Computational fluid dynamics
Drag
Greenhouse gas emissions
Trucks
Fuel consumption
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