Study of Aerodynamic Forces on Double Decker Bus for Driving Stability

• Main Author: Mohd Nizom, Muhammad Syamim
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2011
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/8599/1/2011%20-%20Study%20of%20aerodynamic%20forces%20on%20double%20decker%20bus%20for%20driving%20stability.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/8599/

The title of this project is "Aerodynamic Study of Double Decker Bus for Driving Stability". As portrayed by the title the objective of this project is to evaluate the influence of aerodynamic forces on a double decker bus. The project is also performed to ascertain the limits of the forces for driving stability. These objectives are meant to solve the problems faced by the increasing number of cases of overturned buses on the road. Besides that every vehicle has their own limitations on different terrains. This is affected by many things such as the shape, weight, and height. Though there are many studies on the ability of the passenger car, not many researches are performed on the commercial vehicle. This study covers experimentation and also simulation phases. The experiments is performed in the windtunnel laboratory and the simulation is done using CATIA, GAMBIT, and ANSYS. The experiment is performed for data collection and interpretation for the project and the simulation purpose is to validate the fmdings of the experiment. Through these activities the fmal result would be the achievement of the objective of the project. From the activities performed for this project, the results shows how aerodynamic forces has very little effect to the stability of the double decker bus. This is mainly due to the large mass of the vehicle. Eventhough the values could be seen as quite significant, it is still not enough to critically effect the vehicle. Besides that, this project also showed that the aerodynamic forces tend to be more dominant is the higher speed regions. This fmding proves the equation used to fmd calculate theoretical values of aerodynamic forces are correct.