Numerical Study of The Effects of Vehicle Arrangement on Aerodynamics Resistance

Abstract

The cause of drag force vehicle accounts high fuel losses. Fuel consumption is adversely affected due to aerodynamic forces, which specially is the drag force. Vehicles that are moving in certain arrangement allows for a significant decrease in fuel consumption at highway speeds by reducing the aerodynamic drag on the moving vehicles. In this paper, the effect of vehicle arrangement on the aerodynamic resistance was numerically investigated. The vehicle models were arranged back-to-back with difference distances between each other. The distance was varied with 1.5 m, 2.0 m and 2.5 m. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was performed using ANSYS-Fluent software. The results in terms of drag coefficient were obtained for each of distance setting. There are nine different arrangements were studied. It was found out that the lowest average drag force of which 0.1857 experienced by vehicle model that are arranged at the distance of 1.5m and 2.5 m. This average drag coefficient shows a reduction of 26.8%. Consequently, the aerodynamics resistance can be significantly reduced by having a proper arrangement of vehicle cruising in highways.