Abstract—The rising fuel price and strict government regulations makes the road transport uneconomical now a days. The exterior styling and aerodynamically efficient design for reduction of engine load which reflects in the reduction of fuel consumption are the two essential factors for a successful operation in the competitive world. The bus body building company’s precedence’s are outer surface and structure of the bus and ignore the aerodynamic aspect. The present intercity buses have a poor aerodynamic exterior design. This project aims to modify the outer surface and structure of the bus aerodynamically in order to reduce the effect of drag force of the vehicle which in turn results in reduction of fuel consumption of the vehicle. The Two prototype bus body has been modeled by using CFD to reduce the drag force. These are namely model 1 and model 2. Model 1 is existing Volvo intercity bus model and model 2 is modification of existing Volvo intercity bus. Model 2 is to modify and analyze by using CFD to reduce the drag force, which results in increased performance and reduced the fuel requirement. The overall reduction in aerodynamic drag force is 10%.

Index Terms—Aerodynamics, Drag reduction, Fuel consumption, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Bus

Cite: J Abinesh and J Arunkumar, "CFD Analysis of Aerodynamic Drag Reduction and Improve Fuel Economy," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol.3, No.4, pp. 430-440, October 2014.