Passive drag reduction of square back road vehicles

Altaf, Alaman and Omar, Ashraf Ali and Asrar, Waqar (2014) Passive drag reduction of square back road vehicles. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 134 (2014). pp. 30-43. ISSN 0167-6105

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Abstract

Bluff body vehicles such as trucks and buses do not have a streamlined shapes and hence have high drag which can be reduced to make great savings in operational cost. While rectangular flaps have been widely studied as both passive add-ons and in active drag reducing systems for bluff bodies, changing the basic geometry of the flap has not been explored in literature. In this work, a baseline drag value is obtained for a simplified MAN TGX series truck in a CFD software, and the drag reduction of a proposed elliptically shaped flap is compared to aerodynamically equivalent rectangular flaps. The optimal mounting angle for both flaps is found to be 501. A parametric study of changing the ellipse semi-major axis is carried out to find the optimal length for drag reduction. A maximum drag reduction of 11.1% is achieved using an elliptical flap with 0.12 m semi-major axis; compared to 6.37% for a length equivalent rectangular flap, and 6.84% for a surface area equivalent rectangular flap. Results of the pressure distribution and velocity flow behind the rear of the truck are also given and analyzed.

Item Type:	Article (Journal)
Additional Information:	4277/38911
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Bluff body Passive drag reduction Road vehicles CFD Elliptic flaps
Subjects:	T Technology > TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics > TL1 Motor vehicles
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Engineering > Department of Mechanical Engineering
Depositing User:	Prof. Waqar Asrar
Date Deposited:	29 Oct 2014 10:56
Last Modified:	26 Sep 2017 15:32
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/38911

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