Investigation of Tractor Base Bleeding for Heavy Vehicle Aerodynamic Drag Reduction

The drag reduction capability of tractor base bleeding is investigated using a combination of experiments and numerical simulations. Wind tunnel measurements are made on a 1:20 scale heavy vehicle model at a vehicle width-based Reynolds number of 420,000. The tractor bleeding flow, which is delivered through a porous material embedded within the tractor base, is introduced into the tractor-trailer gap at bleeding coefficients ranging from 0.0-0.018 for two different gap sizes with and without side extenders. At the largest bleeding coefficient with no side extenders, the wind-averaged drag coefficient is reduced by a maximum value of 0.015 or 0.024, depending upon the gap size. To determine the performance of tractor base bleeding under more realistic operating conditions, computational fluid dynamics simulations are performed on a full-scale heavy vehicle traveling within a crosswind for bleeding coefficients ranging from 0.0-0.13. At the largest bleeding coefficient, the drag coefficient of the vehicle is reduced by 0.146. Examination of the tractor-trailer gap flow physics reveals that tractor base bleeding reduces the drag by both decreasing the amount of free-stream flow entrained into the gap and by increasing the pressure of the tractor base relative to that of the trailer frontal surface.