Experimental Aerodynamic Drag Reduction Studies on Bus Coaches of India

Aerodynamic investigations on the models of two types of bus coaches in operation with a transport corporation show that their drag coefficients are considerably large. An attempt has been made to evolve experimentally a streamlined shape with smallest drag coefficient within the operating constraints in India. The streamlined configuration was obtained by rounding the frontal corners systematically and tapering the roof at the rear end. It was possible to obtain a drag coefficient of 0.42 compared to the values of 0.93 and 0.63 for the unstreamlined configurations.