Aerodynamic Improvement of a Loaded Timber Truck

Abstract

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">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.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">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.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">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.</div></div>