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Fuel savings of between 2 to 3 percent were demonstrated in the wind tunnel and road tests of this technology.
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All SOLUS fuel Savings devices have undergone extensive evaluation on the Solus/ODU Representative Heavy Truck (SO RHT) wind tunnel model in the Langley Full Scale wind tunnel.
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Apparently, the wind tunnel was not long enough for a semi and trailer, so they used a 1/4-scale model.
Couldn't they have used a real semi with a short trailer?
Also, according to
http://www.solusinc.com/pdf/2003-01-3377.pdf:
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The three devices have undergone extensive operational testing where they have amassed over 85,000 miles of use. These technologies have shown a combined fuel savings of 10% at an average speed of 47.5 mph.
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So, 2-3% for the strakes and 10% for all of these devices.
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SAE Type II road tests are scheduled for Sping '06 to further document fuel savings
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I did not see any updates.
From the .pdf:
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Dates of Operational Testing - July 2001 to March 2002
and July 2002 and March 2003,
Total Trips 232
Total Miles 253600
Baseline Trailer Trips 135
Baseline Trailer Miles 143207
Experimental Trailer Trips 97
Experimental Trailer Miles 110393
Available Trips 155
Available Miles 182494
Baseline Trailer Trips 86
Baseline Trailer Miles 97165
Baseline Trailer Avg. Speed 47.8
Experimental Trailer Trips 69
Experimental Trailer Miles 85329
Experimental Trailer Avg. Speed 47.4
The average speed of each data set was approximately
47.5 miles per hour.
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Looks like they did A-B-A-B and the 85,000 miles was from the second "B."
Quote:
Device Improvement in Fuel Economy (%)
CVTD 3.5 to 8.3
UFD 0.8 to 3.3
VSD 2.2 to 4.9
TOTAL 6.5 to 16.5
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They also sell side skirts and smooth wheel covers.
cross flow vortex trap gap treatment device (front of trailer)
vortex strake device
undercarriage flow treatment device
Back to my studies!