Method for Preventing Contamination on Trucks Cabin Side Using CFD

Although ignored by most people not directly involved with highway and off-road commercial trucks operation the accumulation of dust and mud on cabin side can become a rather annoying issue. Besides adhering to the passengers clothes dirt contamination may also compromise driver visibility constituting a safety concern. For a truck manufacturer it can revert into quality complaints and negatively influence customers’ future buying decisions. In this context, fascia air deflectors are common devices used in truck industry to control the airflow over the cabin panels and ultimately prevent contamination deposition. This paper presents a methodology to avoid dust and mud accumulation on commercial trucks cabin doors based on the predicted airflow field by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a reference flow metric defined through a simple bench test. Comparing the results of the CFD analysis with an experimental study it is demonstrated that without resorting to costly wind tunnel tests or complex and computationally demanding Eulerian or Lagrangian multiphase simulations the proposed methodology ensures consistent results for tuning a deflector design to effectively prevent dirt accumulation. Soling simulations have also been performed as an add-on for further assessing the design directions provided by the method.