Using wind tunnel measurements and computational fluid dynamics simulations, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) engineers have demonstrated that aerodynamically integrated vehicle shapes decrease body-axis drag in a crosswind, creating large negative front pressures that effectively “pull” the vehicle forward against the wind, much like a sailboat. An open-access paper on the research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The velocity streamlines of the model, developed using computational fluid dynamics simulations on LLNL’s supercomputers. Within the United States, domestic freight is dominated by heavy vehicles, which handle approximately 81% of the total freight weight and nearly 86% of the total value of freight shipments. Although heavy vehicles comprise just 4% of all on-road vehicles, they are responsible for more than 20% of all transportation-related fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. One of the main sources of inefficiency contributing to the low fuel economy (about 6 […]