Effect of Various Deflectors on Drag Reduction for Trucks

Abstract

Abstract Since the early years of the 20th century, when the mass production of commercial vehicle started, it was noticed that air resistance play a major factor related to the vehicle motion. Although fuel consumption was not a concern back in the day, manufacturers started to think about new vehicle shape designs which will help to reduce the aerodynamic drag for the sole purpose of increasing the top speed of vehicles to compensate the lack of power of its engines. A significant numbers of trucks are manufactured and operating in Asian countries especially in Bangladesh and Pakistan without any consideration of their aerodynamic aspect. The main objective of this paper is to quantify the amount of drag generated by these deflectors used in Asian subcontinental truck especially in Bangladesh and Pakistan in a wind tunnel environment and to compare the results with a baseline truck without any external modification. The results shows that the deflectors used in most Bangladeshi and Pakistani trucks manufactured locally are not aerodynamically efficient as they can increase the overall aerodynamic drag up to 58%. By replacing these deflectors with an acronymic one can reduce the fuel consumption by 13%.