Impact assessment of new generation high-speed agricultural tractor aerodynamics on transportation fuel consumption and related phenomena

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international Vol. 30; no. 3; pp. 6658 - 6680
• Main Authors: Canli, Eyub, Kucuksariyildiz, Hanifi, Carman, Kazim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2023
• Subjects: Accidents, Occupational; Agriculture; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Carbon; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecotoxicology; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Gravitation; Research Article; Transportation; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; CFD; Aerodynamic resistance; Exhaust emissions; Drag; Turbulence modelling
• ISSN: 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-022-22642-4

New generation agricultural tractors contribute to transportation by increased travel speeds. There is not any available aerodynamic data on the authentic agricultural tractor form. On-road transportation by tractors is between 8 and 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. Constant speed travel scenarios are analyzed. Corresponding speeds are 5 and 10 to 80 km/h with 10 km/h increments. Reynolds number changes between 1.6 × 10 5 and 2.98 × 10 6 . 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 and 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. The approximated aerodynamic related fuel consumptions for 1-h changes between 0.002 and 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.