TRUCKMAKER'S R & D * USA - Devices under testing at NASA may save trucking billions
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET - A tractor trailer sits in the world's-largest wind tunnel, at the NASA Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, Calif. The truck was part of tests designed to find increases in fuel efficiency that could save the trucking industry billions of dollars a year. The device mounted on the rear of the truck is meant to increase the truck's aerodynamics)
Mountain View,CAL,USA -Geek Gelstat, by Daniel Terdiman -February 16, 2010: -- The American trucking industry could save as much as $10 billion, or 3.4 billion gallons of diesel fuel, a year if devices being tested in a joint public-private initiative at the world's-largest wind tunnel here are rolled out nationally... Over the last few weeks, a partnership between the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the U.S. Air Force, the NASA Ames Research Center, and the conglomerate, Navistar, has been conducting tests on the aerodynamics of tractor-trailer trucks. The findings indicate that new devices could be added onto the nation's thousands of trucks that could increase fuel efficiency on the vehicles by 12 percent... The impact on the environment of the 12 percent increase in fuel efficiency, explained Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) Director George Miller, would be an annual reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions of 36 million tons... The efficiency gains will come as a result of a series of novel devices, effectively skirts that protrude off the rear or drop below a trailer that are designed to reduce the wake size of a trailer, said LLNL senior scientist Kambiz Salari. The tests have been conducted to find the most efficient combination of the devices...
(Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Lab/U.S. Air Force/NASA/NavistarA wind tunnel test on a tractor-trailer designed to identify fuel efficiency increases that could save the trucking industry billions of dollars a year)
Labels: truckmakers news USA, trucks' R and D
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