Exterior Styling of an Intercity Transport Bus for Improved Aerodynamic Performance

Abstract

Intercity buses travel about 250 to 350 km in a stretch and usually are of sleeper coach mode. The exterior styling, sleeper comfort and aerodynamically efficient design for reduced fuel consumption are the three essential factors for a successful operation in the competitive world. The bus body building companies prioritizes the exterior looks of the bus and ignore the aerodynamic aspect. Scientific design of sleepers for increased comfort of the passengers is seldom seen. The overall aim of this project was to redesign an intercity bus with enhanced exterior styling, reduced aerodynamic drag and increased comfort for the passengers. Extensive product study and market study were carried out and aspirations and frustrations of commuters were recorded. An operating intercity bus was benchmarked and analyzed for styling, aerodynamic performance and comfort. Fluent, a commercial CFD code was used to evaluate the aerodynamic performance. Principles of product design were used to analyse the styling and comfort. The benchmarked high floor bus was redesigned with low-floor for reduced aerodynamic drag. The exterior was redesigned with emphasis on improvised aerodynamic performance and appealing looks. The interior was modified to meet aspirations of the commuters. The results of the redesigned exterior body showed a reduction of C d from 0.53 to 0.29 and overall aerodynamic drag reduction by 60% due to combined effect of reduced C d and frontal area. The redesigned interior was found to be at the satisfaction of commuters.

Aerodynamic Drag Reduction of Emergency Response Vehicles

“…Since the main goal of this study is to establish the potential for drag reduction, a simple approach is used based on the recent aerodynamic optimization study of buses [12] that embeds the front and rear light bars into the roof. The front light bar is based on a symmetric aerofoil, where the location of the maximum thickness represents the integrated front lights, and is attached to the rear light bar which has a rectangular cross-section [24].…”

“…Examples include the drag reduction of HGVs [10][11][12], motorsport vehicles [13,14], and passenger vehicles [15,16]. In addition, there is growing recognition of the benefits of coupling high fidelity CFD with systematic optimization techniques for the shape optimization of vehicles.…”

Aerodynamic CFD Based Optimization of Police Car Using Bezier Curves

“…Note that the restrictions on the design variables, to take account of practical constraints on the size of police car, limits the scope for achieving greater drag reductions. For example, reducing the vehicle height (and/or decreasing its width) at its rear also offers significant drag reducing potential [6] …”

“…In recent years the number of studies which have applied Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and optimization methods to improve the aerodynamic design of road vehicles has increased significantly and is recognized as providing a powerful and efficient means of generating improved aerodynamic performance, particularly when detailed experimentation in wind tunnels is not achievable, see e.g. [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The focus of recent studies has been on the drag reduction of Heavy Goods Vehicles, see e.g.…”

“…The focus of recent studies has been on the drag reduction of Heavy Goods Vehicles, see e.g. [1,4,5,6,7]. Currently there have been relatively few studies on the aerodynamic improvement of light trucks and cars [8,9], while a small number still have reported reduced aerodynamic drag using automated design optimization techniques [2,8,10].…”