A Working Group Meeting on Heavy Vehicle Aerodynamic Drag was held at NASA Ames Research Center on September 23, 2002. The purpose of the meeting was to present and discuss technical details on the experimental and computational work in progress and future project plans. Representatives from the Department of Energy (DOE)/Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy/Office of FreedomCAR & Vehicle Technologies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), NASA Ames Research Center (NASA), University of Southern California (USC), California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Freightliner, and Portland State University participated in the meeting. This report contains the technical presentations (viewgraphs) delivered at the Meeting, briefly summarizes the comments and conclusions, and outlines the future action items. The meeting began with an introduction by the Project Lead Rose McCallen of LLNL, where she emphasized that the world energy consumption is predicted to relatively soon exceed the available resources (i.e., fossil, hydro, non-breeder fission). This short fall is predicted to begin around the year 2050. Minimizing vehicle aerodynamic drag will significantly reduce our Nation's dependence on foreign oil resources and help with our world-wide fuel shortage. Rose also mentioned that educating the populace and researchers as to our world energy issues is important and that our upcoming United Engineering Foundation (UEF) Conference on ''The Aerodynamics of Heavy Vehicles: Trucks, Busses, and Trains'' was one way our DOE Consortium was doing this. Mentioned were the efforts of Fred Browand from USC in organizing and attracting internationally recognized speakers to the Conference. Rose followed with an overview of the DOE project goals, deliverables, and FY03 activities. The viewgraphs are attached at the end of this report. Sid Diamond of DOE discussed the reorganization of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and that the Office of Heavy Vehicle Technology is now part of the Office of FreedomCAR & Vehicle Technologies. Sid reviewed the FY03 budget and provided information on some plans for FY04. The soon to be posted DOE request for proposals from industry for projects related to parasitic energy losses was discussed. A minimum of 50% cost share by industry will be required and the proposal must be submitted by industry. Collaborative efforts in aerodynamic drag with members of the DOE consortium are encouraged. Sid also mentioned interest in aerodynamic drag contribution due to wheel wells and underbody flow. Sid also mentioned his continued interest in the application of our computational and experimental expertise to the area of locomotive and railcar aerodynamics for the reduction of drag effects and thus, the reduction of fuel consumption by trains. In summary, the technical presentations at the meeting included a review of experimental results and plans by GTRI, USC, and NASA Ames, the computational results from LLNL and SNL for the integrated tractor-trailer benchmark geometry called the Ground Transportation System (GTS) model, and by LLNL for the tractor-trailer gap and trailer wake flow, and turbulence model development and benchmark simulations being investigated by Caltech. USC is also investigating an acoustic drag reduction device that has been named ''Mozart'', GTRI continues their investigation of a blowing device, and LLNL presented their ideas for 2 new base drag reduction devices. ANL presented their plans for a DOE supported Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Paccar Truck Company utilizing commercial software tools to simulate the flow and drag for an actual tractor and showed the results of some preliminary griding attempts. The attendees also had the opportunity to tour the 12-ft pressure wind tunnel the machine shop were the Generic Conventional Model (GCM, a.k.a. SLRT) was being readied for the scheduled November experiments. Much of the discussion involved wind tunnel testing plans, analysis of existing experimental data, investigations of drag reduction devices, simulation results, and needed modeling improvements. Further details are provided in the attached viewgraphs.
