Investigation of the Effect of Longitudinal Distance Between Two Cars on Fuel Consumption and Drag Coefficient

According to the development of technology of automated highways, the platooning can be benefited for improvement in fuel consumption. Platooning has already been exercised in the nature and industry as an effective tool to reduce the drag coefficient. The goal of this article is to investigate the effect of longitudinal distance between two passenger cars on drag coefficient and hence the fuel consumption numerically and experimentally. It has already been shown by various investigators that a passenger car travelling in the wake of another car will experience a reduction in drag coefficient. The optimized distance and speed to attain the least drag coefficient and fuel consumption are reported. The car’s speeds of 70, 90 and 110 kilometers per hour have been examined in this study. To evaluate the numerical results, some field tests are done. A device which was particularly designed and fabricated to measure the fuel consumption was installed on a sedan midsize car. The results show that the car platooning with an optimized longitudinal distance between two cars can reduce the drag coefficient by 7 percent.