Impact assessment of new generation high-speed agricultural tractor aerodynamics on transportation fuel consumption and related phenomena.

Abstract

New generation agricultural tractors contribute to transportation by increased travel speeds. There is not any available aerodynamic data on the authentic agricultural tractor form. On-road transportation by tractors is between 8 and 30% of their operational time. In this work, two agricultural tractors are modelled via computational fluid dynamics for nine different speeds to determine aerodynamic resistances. Constant speed travel scenarios are analyzed. Corresponding speeds are 5 and 10 to 80km/h with 10km/h increments. Reynolds number changes between 1.6 × 105 and 2.98 × 106. The characteristic lengths are taken as the square root of the streamwise projected area of the tractor geometries. Aerodynamic forces exerted on the tractors change between 3 and 746N. The calculated drag coefficients are found as independent from Reynolds number and are 0.6 and 0.78 for the two different types of driver compartments. The approximated aerodynamic related fuel consumptions for 1-h changes between 0.002 and 8.28 lt/s which correspond to 0.001 to 5.76kg/s carbon emission. A potential improvement in decreasing aerodynamic resistance about 20% is discussed by spatial data. Since the conducted work is being regarded as the first instance in the literature, it is estimated that several consecutive reports will be triggered.