Aerodynamic Effects of an Overtaking Articulated Heavy Goods Vehicle on Car-Trailer-An Analysis to Improve Controllability

It is well known and a common experience among drivers that controllability and stability of a car-trailer combination is affected when an articulated Heavy Goods Vehicle overtakes.

In this paper, aerodynamic effects to a car-trailer combination when it is overtaken by an articulated HGV, have been analyzed experimentally using 1/20 scale models in wind tunnel, and a method to suppress this phenomenon has been investigated.

The dynamic behaivor of a car-trailer combination is simulated by a simple mathematical model.

The result shows that a car-trailer combination can be stable following the addittion of aerodynamic devices to each side of the vehicle.

This simulated result is verified by the on-read test.