TY - JOUR
T1 - Aerodynamics of electric cars in platoon SAGE publications
AU - Ebrahim, Hesham
AU - Dominy, Robert
AU - Martin, Nick
N1 - Funding information: The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Nissan Technical Centre Europe for providing the vehicles, test facilities and staff support to conduct these investigations. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
PY - 2021/4/1
Y1 - 2021/4/1
N2 - The potential aerodynamic benefits of operating full-scale electric vehicles in platoons of 2 and 3 vehicles have been investigated. Since drag reduction has a direct impact on vehicle range, power consumption was measured directly and surface pressure measurements were made to characterise the changes in pressure field that influence the power required to overcome aerodynamic drag. CFD simulations were validated against the track measurements to assess the limitations of using a practical, limited number of pressure tappings to measure drag. The overall power consumption for the whole platoon was found to reduce proportionally with the reduction of vehicle spacing and it was also observed that increasing the number of vehicles in the platoon from 2 to 3 further increased the power savings from 33.4% to 39.1%. These power savings were attributed primarily to changes in surface pressure acting on the base of the leading vehicle and the forebody of the trailing vehicle.
AB - The potential aerodynamic benefits of operating full-scale electric vehicles in platoons of 2 and 3 vehicles have been investigated. Since drag reduction has a direct impact on vehicle range, power consumption was measured directly and surface pressure measurements were made to characterise the changes in pressure field that influence the power required to overcome aerodynamic drag. CFD simulations were validated against the track measurements to assess the limitations of using a practical, limited number of pressure tappings to measure drag. The overall power consumption for the whole platoon was found to reduce proportionally with the reduction of vehicle spacing and it was also observed that increasing the number of vehicles in the platoon from 2 to 3 further increased the power savings from 33.4% to 39.1%. These power savings were attributed primarily to changes in surface pressure acting on the base of the leading vehicle and the forebody of the trailing vehicle.
KW - Original Articles
KW - Platoon aerodynamics
KW - bluff body aerodynamics
KW - drag reduction
KW - platoons
KW - track investigations
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85094679489
U2 - 10.1177/0954407020965028
DO - 10.1177/0954407020965028
M3 - Article
SN - 0954-4070
VL - 235
SP - 1396
EP - 1408
JO - Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D: Journal of Automobile Engineering
JF - Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D: Journal of Automobile Engineering
IS - 5
ER -
