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An experimental study on of the effect of various deflectors used for light

trucks in Indian subcontinent

Article in Energy Procedia · February 2019

DOI: 10.1016/j.egypro.2019.02.115

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 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
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2nd International Conference on Energy and Power, ICEP2018, 13–15 December 2018,
2nd International Conference on Energy and
Sydney, Power, ICEP2018, 13–15 December 2018,
Australia
Sydney, Australia
An experimental study on of the effect of various deflectors used for
An experimental
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on District Heatingdeflectors
and Cooling used for
light trucks in Indian subcontinent
light trucks in Indian subcontinent
Harun Chowdhury*,feasibility
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Raymond Juwono, the heat
Mohamed Zaid,demand-outdoor
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Mohamed
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a,b,c School of Engineering,
a RMIT University,
a Melbourne,bVIC 3083, AUSTRALIA c c
I. Andrić *,School
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of Engineering, , J. Fournier
RMIT University, ., B.
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3083, AUSTRALIA , O. Le Corre
a
IN+ Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research - Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract b
Veolia Recherche & Innovation, 291 Avenue Dreyfous Daniel, 78520 Limay, France
Abstract c
Département Systèmes Énergétiques et Environnement - IMT Atlantique, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44300 Nantes, France
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© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +6199256103.
Cooling.
E-mail address: harun.chowdhury@rmit.edu.au
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +6199256103.
E-mail address: harun.chowdhury@rmit.edu.au
Keywords:©Heat
1876-6102 2018demand; Forecast;
The Authors. Climatebychange
Published Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open
1876-6102 access
© 2018 Thearticle under
Authors. the CC BY-NC-ND
Published license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection
This is an and
openpeer-review under
access article responsibility
under of the scientific
the CC BY-NC-ND licensecommittee of the 2nd International Conference on Energy and Power, ICEP2018.
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2nd International Conference on Energy and Power, ICEP2018.
1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and Cooling.
1876-6102 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2nd International Conference on Energy and Power, ICEP2018.
10.1016/j.egypro.2019.02.115
 Harun Chowdhury et al. / Energy Procedia 160 (2019) 34–39 35
2 Harun Chowdhury / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000

price and the environmental awareness, automotive industries are trying to design more fuel-efficient vehicles as
well as improving the existing technology. Drag force is one of the crucial aspects when designing a vehicle. One of
the methods of minimizing the drag force is by designing an aerodynamic external shape of the vehicle. It is obvious
that a vehicle with lower drag coefficient (CD) will need less fuel to overcome the drag force. Unlike normal
passenger car, heavy commercial vehicles are inefficient because of their un-streamlined body shape [1]. The
average drag force for typical vehicles can be seen from Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Drag coefficient of different vehicles type [1].

The coefficient of drag of a heavy- commercial vehicle is around 0.8 [2]. The drag force is increased due to the
large frontal areas and bluff-body shape [3]. When travelling on the highway with 100 km/h speed, a 40- tonne truck
is estimated to consume around 40 L of fuel. This amount of fuel is four times higher than a normal road car.
Pressure drag plays a big role with contributing 80% of the total drag produced by a heavy commercial vehicle [4-5].
Aerodynamic drag with a small sized truck typically accounts for about 75 - 80% of the total resistance to motion at
100 km/h [5]. Therefore, reducing aerodynamic drag contributes significantly to the fuel economy as well as the
reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Any extra structure such as front deflectors of the truck can increase the fuel
consumption to a significant amount if it is not aerodynamically efficient [6-7]. However, in the Indian subcontinent,
especially in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, there are still a significant number of light trucks are operational that
are made by modifying a Bedford J series truck as shown in Fig. 2. More details on trucks can be found in [8].

Fig. 2. A Bedford J series truck without and with modifications.

In Bangladesh, the annual growth rate of registered motor vehicle is around 10%. According to Bangladesh Road
Transport Authority, the total number of registered vehicle in Bangladesh is more than 2.1 million in 2013. Almost
5% among them are trucks, which is approximately one thousand registered trucks in Bangladesh [9-10]. The trucks
in Bangladesh are usually modified according to the owner’s request. Usually the ornament attached to the truck
shows some combination of epigraphic formulae, poetry, repetitive patterns and figural images [11]. Subsequently,
36 Harun Chowdhury et al. / Energy Procedia 160 (2019) 34–39
Harun Chowdhury / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000 3

more the ornaments attached to the truck will reflect the wealthier of the owner. The modified truck is also called
“jingle truck” as it is producing a lot of noise when travels due to the chain tassels that are hanging on the front
bumper of the truck. This type of truck can also be found in Pakistan and some parts of India.
The main problem of this modified truck is the external ornaments that are attached to its body can increase the
drag coefficient and hence more fuel will be needed to overcome the drag force. A commercial truck usually travels
around 130,000 km annually [11-13]. Because of the un-streamlined shape of the truck, 50% of the fuel is
contributed to overcome the drag force when a truck is travelling in the speed of 80 km/h [1]. The reduction of the
drag force will be important such as only few percent of the reduction will contribute to fuel saving and less
greenhouse gas emission. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to quantify the amount of drag generated by
these deflectors used in light trucks made and operated in the Indian subcontinental especially in Bangladesh and
Pakistan with an experimental and numerical study. Furthermore, a fuel saving aerodynamic design of a deflector is
also studied and compared.

2. Experimental method

2.1. Experimental models

A one-tenth scale detailed model of a Bedford J truck was used as a baseline truck. Two deflectors were also
manufactured replicating the design of Bangladeshi and Pakistani trucks. Additionally, an aerodynamic shaped
deflector was developed to minimize drag force while attached to the baseline truck model. All the model deflectors
were made one-tenth of their full size to fit with the baseline truck model. Fig. 3 shows the orthogonal views of a
baseline truck fitted with 3 different deflectors used in this study.

a. b. c. d.

Fig. 3. Baseline truck fitted with deflector: (a) Bangladeshi, (b) Pakistani, and (c) Aerodynamic.

2.2. Wind tunnel test

The RMIT Industrial Wind Tunnel was used for this study. The tunnel is a closed return circuit wind tunnel with
a turntable to simulate the cross-wind effects. The maximum speed of the tunnel is approximately 145 km/h. The
rectangular test section dimensions are 3 meters wide, 2 meters high and 9 meters long, and the tunnel’s cross-
sectional area is 6 square meters. More details of this wind tunnel can be found in [7-8]. The tunnel was calibrated
prior conducting the experiments and air speeds inside the wind tunnel were measured with a modified National
Physical Laboratory (NPL) ellipsoidal head pitot-static tube (located at the entry of the test section) which was
connected through flexible tubing with the Baratron® pressure sensor made by MKS Instruments, USA.
The truck model was connected through a mounting sting with the JR3 multi-axis load cell made by JR3, Inc.,
USA. The sensor was used to measure all three forces (drag, lift and side forces) and three moments (yaw, pitch and
roll) simultaneously. Fig. 4 shows the schematic of the experimental setup. For baseline comparison, initially the
aerodynamic forces were measured for the baseline truck without any external attachment (i.e., deflector) under a
range of wind speeds (40−100 km/h) at 0º yaw angle. Then the measurements were taken by attaching the
Bangladeshi, Pakistani and aerodynamic deflectors on the baseline truck. Each set of data was recorded for 10
seconds time average with a frequency of 20 Hz ensuring electrical interference is minimised. Multiple data sets
were collected at each speed tested and the results were averaged for minimising the further possible errors in the
raw experimental data. Experimental models inside the RMIT Industrial Wind Tunnel is shown in Fig. 5.
4 Harun Chowdhury / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000
Harun Chowdhury et al. / Energy Procedia 160 (2019) 34–39 37

Baseline Truck

Wind
D

Load Sensor
Strut Tunnel Floor
Fixed support

Fig. 4. Schematic of the experimental setup.

a. b. c. d.
Fig. 5. Experimental setup inside the RMIT Industrial Wind Tunnel test section. Baseline truck fitted with deflector: (a) Bangladeshi, (b)
Pakistani, and (c) Aerodynamic

3. Results and discussion

In this paper, only drag force (D) data and its dimensionless quantity drag coefficient (CD) are presented. The CD
was calculated by using the following formula:

D (1)
CD =
1 ρ 2
2 V A

The CD as a function of speed for various configurations of truck at 0º yaw angle is presented in Fig. 6. The result
shows that the baseline truck has almost constant CD value about 0.47. Similar results were found by Chowdhury at
al. [8]. In this study, the CD values of truck ranges between 0.41 and 0.51 depending on the aerodynamic design of
the front deflector. The baseline truck with the aerodynamic deflector attached has the lowest CD value among all
other configurations tested.
1.00
0.90
Coefficient of Drag (Cd)

0.80
0.70
0.60
0.50
0.40
0.30 Baseline
0.20 Bangladeshi
Pakistani
0.10 Aerodynamics
0.00
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Speed (km/h)

Fig. 6. Drag coefficient (CD) as a function of wind speed.

38 Harun Chowdhury et al. / Energy Procedia 160 (2019) 34–39
Harun Chowdhury / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000 5

A computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study was carried out to understand the fluid flow around the models.
Fig. 7 represents CFD post processing for velocity contour and velocity streamline for the truck models with 4
different configurations. It can be seen in the region closer to the rear section the vortices are very chaotic because
the shape of truck is not fully symmetric. With vortices extending along the downstream, the vortices gradually
combine into a pair of vortices with contrary direction rotations and the strength become weaker in the far
downstream section.

Fig. 7. CFD post processing: (a) velocity contour, (b) velocity streamline.

The results shown in Fig. 7 indicate that the incoming flow is separated in the front of the truck into two regions,
of which one on to the top and one on the bottom part of the truck body. The top flow region is also separated into
two different regions in the flow pattern over the deflector. One is down to the ground region and forms the vortices
for the body stop through the space between the ground floor and truck body. For the baseline model (a), the
velocity flow accelerated at the top edge region of the body and forms a low-pressure zone due to the gap between
front truck and the trailer body. Then the flow continues to the downstream and creates huge vortices because of the
shape of the truck and trailer body. For the Bangladeshi model truck (b), the air flows smoothly through the hood
and top of the body till the fairing. After mounting the fairing in the front of truck body, it increases the pressure
drag of the whole truck body. Similar process for the Pakistani model truck (c), it can be seen in the contour that it
produces more pressure drag than the other three models. Moreover, for Aerodynamic shape truck (d) above shows
a good streamline flow attached over the top surface. As the incoming air flow tracks closer to the surface, from the
truck main body and downstream the trailer, more air is also transported into the trailer gap, which increases the
disturbance of the flow in the region.
The increase of drag force for various fairings at 0° yaw angle is displayed in Table 1. The results indicate about
14% and 22% increase of drag force for the truck model configured with Bangladeshi and Pakistani deflector design
respectively, compared to the baseline model (without any fairing attached to it). This result proves that the
additional fairings that have been implemented in Bangladeshi and Pakistani deflectors are generating more drag
 Harun Chowdhury et al. / Energy Procedia 160 (2019) 34–39 39
6 Harun Chowdhury / Energy Procedia 00 (2018) 000–000

force. On the other hand, the aerodynamic fairing exhibits 12% reduction of drag forces compared to the baseline
model.
Table 1. Drag increase % compared to baseline model
Configuration Drag increase
Bangladeshi 14%
Pakistani 22%
Aerodynamic 3 -12%

The increase of drag has direct impacts on the fuel consumption. As the drag increases, the fuel consumption also
increases linearly [13]. Additionally, the non-aerodynamic design of such trucks found in Bangladesh and Pakistan
can also impact the directional stability as the vehicle’s centre of gravity changes and the overall lift is reduced due
to the disturbance of the flow over the roof [1]. Furthermore, the intricate external designs of the truck deflectors
also contribute to wind noise and dirt deposition [1]. Because of increasing fuel consumption, the running cost will
be also increased which will also accelerate deterioration of air quality. Additionally, the increased fuel consumption
creates extra pressure on national energy security. As of 2009, the world burnt over 1.3 trillion litres of petrol and
diesel each year for powering hundreds of millions cars and trucks. A study by Snyder [5] indicated that in the US,
if it was possible to reduce fuel consumption by as little as 1% (which typically equates to merely 0.1 L/100 km for
a standard car), US $30 million could be saved annually.

4. Conclusions

A significant number of trucks are manufactured in many countries of the Indian subcontinent especially in
Bangladesh and Pakistan without any consideration of their aerodynamic aspect. The results show that the deflectors
used in most Bangladeshi and Pakistani light trucks manufactured locally are not aerodynamically efficient as they
can increase the overall aerodynamic drag up to 22%. By replacing these deflectors with an aerodynamic design will
not only save fuel consumption but also reduce significant amount of greenhouse gas emission. These countries can
be economically benefited for a huge amount with a little modification of these existing traditional trucks.

References

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[2] K.R. Cooper, Full-Scale Wind Tunnel Tests of Production and Prototype, Second-Generation Aerodynamic Drag-Reducing Devices for
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[4] R.E. Schoon, On-road Evaluation of Devices to Reduce Heavy Truck Aerodynamic Drag, SAE Publication, SAE Paper No. 2007-01-4294,
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[7] S. Watkins, J.W. Saunders, P.H. Hoffmann, Wind Tunnel Modelling of Commercial Vehicle Drag Reducing Devices: Three Case Studies,
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[8] Chowdhury, H., Loganathan, B., Mustary, I., Moria, H., & Alam, F. (2017). Effect of Various Deflectors on Drag Reduction for Trucks.
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[11] J. J. Elias, "Truck decoration and religious identity: material culture and social function in pakistan," Material Religion, vol. 1, pp. 48-70,
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[12] H. Chowdhury, H. Moria, A. Ali, I. Khan, F. Alam, and S. Watkins, "A study on aerodynamic drag of a semi-trailer truck," Procedia
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