When is it Fuel Efficient for a Heavy Duty Vehicle to Catch Up With a Platoon?

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When is it Fuel Efficient for a Heavy Duty Vehicle to Catch Up With a Platoon?

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Liang, Kuo-Yun / Mårtensson, Jonas / Johansson, Karl Henrik

Vehicle platooning has in recent years become an important research eld for thevehicle industry. By establishing a platoon of heavy duty vehicles, the fuel consumption can bereduced for the follower vehicles due to the slipstream eect. However, as vehicles are scatteredon the road driving by themselves, coordination amongst the vehicles is required. In this paperwe study the problem of when it is benecial for a heavy duty vehicle to drive faster in orderto catch up and join a platoon. We derive a formula, based on at road and with no vehicleaccelerations, to calculate if it is more fuel-ecient for a vehicle to drive faster and platoonor keep driving alone. Depending on the distance between the vehicles and the distance to thedestination, the fuel savings vary. For a trip of 350 km, with a distance of 10km to the vehicleahead, the fuel saving could be up to 7% if the follower vehicle decides to increase the speed from80 km/h to 90 km/h in order to catch up and form a platoon, assuming an air drag reductionof 32% when platooning. Sensitivity analysis has shown that the speeds need to be relativelyaccurate in order to not give any false positive catch up decisions. ; QC 20131217