A Wind-Tunnel Investigation of the Influence of Separation Distance, Lateral Stagger, and Trailer Configuration on the Drag-Reduction Potential of a Two-Truck Platoon
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
<div>A wind-tunnel study was undertaken to investigate the drag reduction potential of two-truck platooning, in the context of understanding some of the factors that may influence the potential fuel savings and greenhouse-gas reductions. Testing was undertaken in the National Research Council Canada 2 m × 3 m Wind Tunnel with two 1/15-scale models of modern aerodynamic tractors paired with dry-van trailers configured with and without combinations of side-skirts and boat-tails.</div> <div>Separation distances of 0.14, 0.28, 0.49, 0.70 and 1.04 vehicle lengths were tested (3 m, 6 m, 10.5 m, 15 m, and 22.5 m full scale). Additionally, within-lane lateral offsets up to 0.31 vehicle widths (0.8 m full scale) were evaluated, along with a full-lane offset of 1.42 vehicle widths (3.7 m full scale). This study has made use of a wind-averaged-drag coefficient as the primary metric for evaluating the effect of vehicle platooning.</div> <div>The lead-vehicle model experienced improved drag reduction as the separation distance decreased, with no significant influence of vehicle configuration on the results. Of the matched vehicle-model pairs, the case with side-skirts showed the lowest magnitude of drag reduction for the trailing model at most separation distances, while the case with boat-tails showed the largest drag reductions for the trailing model at most separation distances. Of the mismatched pairs, placing the more aerodynamically-efficient vehicle model in the lead position resulted in a greater drag reduction for the trailing vehicle and the full platoon. No significant sensitivity to the range of within-lane lateral offsets tested (up to 0.31 model widths, or 0.8 m full-scale) were observed in the wind-tunnel tests. The trailing model experienced significant reductions of wind speed preceding the front grille, in excess of 70% at close distances, which indicates the potential for significant reductions of cooling flow rates for a full-scale vehicle. Estimates of potential fuel saving and greenhouse-gas reductions are also provided.</div>
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it