Experimentally detected aerodynamic drag coefficient of the agricultural tractor form considering effects of windshield angle and hood front shape

Agricultural tractors are improving their capacity, speed, and performance. However, the characteristic form of the agricultural tractors is not known in terms of aerodynamics. This is required in modeling transportational duties and their impacts on energy and environment, especially considering tractor-trailer couples. In this work, this characteristic form solely investigated apart from the couple to base a foundation. The geometry was adapted from a commercial model. The model was simplified greatly to isolate numerous parameters yielding a generic shape. Only geometrical features as parameters were selected as the nose shape as the leading surface and the windshield angle. Scaled models were tested in a wind tunnel. Drag coefficients independent from Reynolds number, drag forces, pressure distributions on the symmetry planes and pressure coefficients were obtained. An extrapolation was made in order to predict drag force related fuel consumption and CO2 emission for a full-scale tractor on-road transportation scenario based on experimentally obtained drag coefficient. It is understood that changes in tractor front surface topology and wind shield angle can lead to drag changes up to 3%. A 0.72 value of drag coefficient may be assumed for the generic agricultural tractor form. Based on this value, an on-road agricultural tractor cruising with 70 km h−1 is predicted to have a drag sourced fuel consumption of 3.9 kg h−1 and CO2 emission of 10.19 kg h−1. Tractor trailer couples and their platoons are of interest in terms of research and computational simulations that may utilize present results as validator.