I've got your inflatable boat tail right here.
 

http://www.yankodesign.com/images/de.../chameleon.jpg
http://www.yankodesign.com/images/de...chameleon3.jpg
The Bionic Chameleon Truck | Yanko Design
They mention the articulated driver position, but not the loading ramp that rolls out like a giant tongue.

The same designer has a dump truck as well:

http://www.yankodesign.com/images/de...ppertruck2.jpg
http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/02/04/move-over-tonka/

How wide is this supposed to be?

How wide do you want it?

The truck is likely ≤8ft. The excavator doesn't have the same limitation.

Last time I looked up the sizes of International Shipping Containers they were smaller all the way around than a truck trailer.

However even the smaller ones only a foot narrower than a 8-foor wide trailer.

Leaving one with less than six inches each side to play with.

My opinion, this level of design being expressed here is of toy design quality, perhaps Sci-Fi prop design quality, and that includes both examples shown.

You are not seeing "form follows function" or "economy of design approach" so favored by profit seeking businesses.

This differs from actual problem solving and improving existing products.

In the "arts" there is room for such ventures/outreaches, and without them things would stagnate.

I have never seen a woman walking down the street in some of the more wild fashions seen on Paris fashion runways. However, that's not to say they don't have an influence on trends and serve no purpose.

If I were to look to nature for inspiration for an animal or plant that envelops another, a snake swallowing a rat whole comes to mind, and then you have the Venus fly trap.

Caterpillars and beetles, not so much.

EDIT:

I went to the website, and must add centipedes.......not so much.

The next part says "Standard containers are 8-foot (2.44 m) wide"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container

Shouldn't it say "8 feet wide?"

The super singles are outside of the conex and there is a gap between them. Super singles are 17.5 inches wide. If there is 8.5 inches of gap, body, and fruit roll-up storage on each side, that makes this abomination 12 feet wide.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1506613714

I'll grant you the use cases.

Agreed. Thread title points to the variable-wheelbase, articulated body part. aerohead always speaks highly of the inflatable boat tail. Recast it as a motor home with a balcony and screened porch. Better?

Here's another example of an articulated body:

Armadillo solar moped concept looks like a hard shelled bug on wheels

https://i1.wp.com/www.greendiary.com...770.jpg?w=1170https://i0.wp.com/www.greendiary.com...770.jpg?w=1170

A year ago I never used Wikipedia for shipping container information, I used multiple other sources until I got matching information.

Almost a year ago I looked into using them in an architecture application, but found them to be smaller than a jail cell.

7'-6" may have been the internal dimension I recalled, this graphic below says 2.35 meters which converts to around 7'-8.52" using an online calculator. I was 2.5" off Wiki is 1.5" off, the design concept is flawed either way.


https://www.movinglabor.com/moving-o...ping-container
https://www.movinglabor.com/images/s...iner-specs.jpg

If I were to grade it as college work, it would score high points for creativity. Low points in the nuts and bolts catagory.

Current legal LOAD width is 8'6" or 102" wide. I suspect vehicle width matches. Anywhere anytime wide load unescorted in California is under 10ft which gives you a foot on each side of a standard traffic lane but not many use those.

Well, I guess the implausibility of swallowing a shipping container falsifies the notion of an articulated spine and flexible membranes. :( I thought we might speculate on whether the flexible part is solid or a semipermeable membrane, like trampoline mesh.

I'm not sorry though, because the next time I need to find that solar moped again, I can just come here.

Maybe we need Sheppard77 to chime in.

I always thought there were restrictions on anything over 8'-0" wide.

Meaning you can go with 8'-6" wide but you have to stay on the highway and perhaps not travel at all at night. At least that's what I remember when I looked into it over 30 years ago.

I'm not sure how you can deliver anything, and anything on time with those sorts of restrictions.

Here is my state Michigan.

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Loads_dim_87014_7.pdf
This paper has good graphics, says 8'-6" width, and I'm not seeing the Interstate Highway only restriction.

http://www.idot.illinois.gov/Assets/...OPER%20753.pdf

He's welcome of course, but it's my thread and I say it's not about shipping containers (the floors in those things are full of nasty cr*p), it's about active aerodynamics.

It's also permissible to talk about the wheel bogeys on the dumper.

Well, it's been settled that the width is at a minimum questionable.

The other claims are also questionable.

The Bionic Chameleon Truck | Yanko Design
Terrible aerodynamics, but they didn't even attempt to deceive there with a claim.

A packaging study, but it fails the smell test.

EDIT: link to the designer's bio, he's an instructor, does some outside work.

Haishan Deng | Cleveland Institute of Art College of Art | 800.223.4700

Грузовик будущего: The Chameleon и Super Tipper Truck от Haishan Deng (обзор и фото) | Steer.ru
http://steer.ru/archives/090608/Deng/image_0.jpg
http://steer.ru/archives/090608/Deng/image_2.jpg
http://steer.ru/archives/090608/Deng/image_4.jpg

The rear track narrows, or should I say the front is wider, making our width discussion even more relevant.

Plywood?

Active aerodynamics would help shipping containers, too. Or even passive aerodynamics. Giant sheets of coroplast? That is a potential 10% improvement!

Stretch wrapping some vinyl would help, and be cheap too.

Heavy Duty 1000d*1000d 30*30 Glossy Tarp Truck Side Curtain - Buy High Quality Side Curtains,Truck Side Curtain,Tarp Product on Alibaba.com
http://g04.s.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1Ei_pJ...mi-trailer.jpg

The morality of the story lies in fact, that if the author of this design study did not see the obvious problem with excessive width of this creation, he probably was uniformly oblivious to other, finer mechanical aspects.

Imho it should be hard shell. Any type of fabric would need to be stretched to prevent excessive fluttering and fluttering induced drag.

Can fluttering be surpressed by an open mesh? It seems like it would damp out the pressure differential on the two sides that drive the fluttering.

In any case the solar moped is a hard shell solution.

I'm suspicious of interference drag between the spine and the fabric. The only thing to lose by inverting the arrangement is the insectoid look.

Not to mention the open pie-cuts on the bottom.

I had the opportunity to talk with aerohead in Odgen about streamlining a shipping container. When I touch the 3D modeling app, I'll post the result here.

We ship lots of bulk produce from our region by tractor trailers. Many have open tops covered by canvas supported by transverse ribs. Very little flutter when taunt.

Sort of related/unrelated. We were visiting my cousin who drives flatbed trucks usually full of MDF or plywood while he happened to be stopping at a local mill while they loaded his truck. I couldn't believe how long it took to both load and then tarp the load, what a waste of productive driving time IMO. So a truck that could "swallow" a load (OMG I need to rethink that line!) may not help aerowise but could lead to better productivity. The open sided trailer with tarp sides would help quicken the tarping, which seemed to take an hour for the guy ahead of my cousin, but then it forces an aerodynamic height that is higher than necessary for heavy loads like metal and plywood that can't be stacked that high. It would be cool if the trailer that swallowed the load (there it is again) could automatically collapse or adjust itself to the best possible shape.

What will probably happen sooner are trucks either self driving or computer assisted that could from road trains driving inches apart. Then they could draft like a freight train on rails, they could even add a specific boat tailed trailer to bring up the rear or a special cab leaving all the other trucks to be as boxy as they want, actually the boxier the better so they had less gaps.

They could have a loaded conex ready and waiting and it is relatively easy to load shipping containers.

We transported some of those in Afghanistan, but more trucks and trailers with removable flatbeds. We were supposed to drop off one flatbed, pick up another, and roll, but instead we spent at least half an hour, and often much longer.

By the way, my exes are crazy.

I don't think these big MDF bundles could have been loaded into a shipping container. They needed to be loaded from the side by large forklifts. One on one side, then one in the other, probably to keep it from tipping. Probably not a common type of load overall though. Not a giant mill either, they probably aren't filling 20 trucks per day so it's not worth spending big bucks on something besides a good old forklift and flatbed trailers. It would drive me nuts as a driver waiting though.