Making the Best Out of Aerodynamics: Platoons Applus IDIADA

Format:

Conference/Event

Author/Creator:

Davila, Davila, author.

Contributor:

Aramburu, Enric

Freixas, Alex

Conference Name:

SAE 2013 World Congress & Exhibition (2013-04-16 : Detroit, Michigan, United States)

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Warrendale, PA SAE International 2013

Summary:

In a near future, platooning could become one of the mostaccessible strategies to help reduce the consumption of fuel andthe emissions of toxic gases in the atmosphere, while also addingsafety to the users and generating a better traffic flow.Nowadays, the auto industry and the governments are facingenormous challenges to reduce the amount of pollution in theatmosphere, to decrease the dependency on fossil fuels to generateenergy and to increase safety on the highways. Several approachesare made, such as bio-fuels, hybrid and electric vehicles, enginedownsizing and new modes of transportation that are more versatileand environmentally friendly. The downside is that most of thisefforts are costly and require time and expense to be put towork.Platooning is an alternative option to minimize the impact tothe environment profiting from the aerodynamic effects that occurnaturally around a moving vehicle. The technology is available andcan become production ready by the year 2020. This has beenevidenced by the project SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for theEnvironment), from the 7th European Framework Program. SARTRE is acollaborative project of 7 companies from 4 different countriesthat set out to develop a platooning system using off-the-shelftechnology and requiring no modification to the roadinfrastructure.To validate the previously mentioned benefits and to promote theadoption of this technology, the project partners developed a fullyfunctional platoon prototype of 5 vehicles (2 trucks, 3 cars) andassessed its performance. Applus+ IDIADA, formerly the Instituto deInvestigación Aplicada del Automóvil (Applied Automotive ResearchInstitute) was the partner in charge of performing the fuelconsumption evaluation and the system validation. For the fuelconsumption evaluation, two approaches were considered.First, an aerodynamic simulation to know the approximatereduction in aerodynamic coefficients and forces and then a set oftrack tests to evaluate the real fuel consumption and to validatethe virtual data. The outcome was a reduction in the fuelconsumption for all the vehicles.To complement the results, some workshops were carried out withthe relevant stakeholders, in order to obtain a set of proposalsand requirements in technology state of the art and legislationchanges required to adopt platooning on tomorrow's roads

Notes:

Vendor supplied data

Publisher Number:

2013-01-0767

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license