Impact Assessment of New Generation High Speed Agricultural Tractor Aerodynamics on Transportation Fuel Consumption and Related Phenomena

Abstract

New generation agricultural tractors contribute to transportation by increased travel speeds. There is not any available aerodynamic data on authentic agricultural tractor form. On-road transportation by tractors is between 8 to 30% of their operational time. In this work, two agricultural tractors are modelled via computational fluid dynamics for nine different speeds to determine aerodynamic resistances. Corresponding speeds are 10 to 80 km/h with 10 km/h increments and additionally 5 km/h. Reynolds number changes between 1.6×105 and 2.98×106. The characteristic lengths are taken as the square root of the streamwise projected area of the tractor geometries. Aerodynamic forces exerted on the tractors change between 3 N to 746 N. The calculated drag coefficients are found as independent from Reynolds number and are 0.6 and 0.78 for the two different types of driver compartments. Constant speed travel scenarios are analysed. The approximated aerodynamic related fuel consumptions for one-hour changes between 0.002 to 8.28 lt/s which correspond to 0.001 to 5.76 kg/s carbon emission. A potential improvement in decreasing aerodynamic resistance about 20% is discussed by spatial data. Since the conducted work is being regarded as the first instance in the literature, it is estimated that several consecutive reports will be triggered.