Latest News
The CVDC is pleased to present a one-day event at MIRA, Nuneaton, UK. Do not miss a unique opportunity to see first-hand the recent advancements in heavy vehicle technology developed by the CVDC. The Technology Showcase will feature exhibits, vehicle demonstrations, project updates and panel discussions relating to heavy goods vehicles and the future of long-combination-vehicles in the UK and Europe. Vehicle demonstrations will include the CVDC’s own actively steered B-Double and Denby Transport Ltd’s ‘Eco-Link’ concept vehicle. New technologies will also be on display from Firestone Industrial Products, Haldex, Arvin Meritor, SimPack, Volvo and Goodyear. Tickets to the event are strictly limited and early registration is highly recommended.
CVDC: 2009 a Successful Year for Research
ARNHEM, Netherlands
The Steering Committee of the CVDC met on Thursday, 8 April at the new Firestone Industrial Products Technical Center (FTC) in Arnhem, Netherlands. Seven of the CVDC’s member organizations met to discuss what was a successful year for research in the CVDC. This past year the CVDC produced 11 papers published in internationally reviewed journals or conferences.
David Cebon, Will Midgley, and Jonathan Miller talked about progress in MEng projects, the actively steered B-double project, regenerative braking of heavy vehicles, and an advanced pneumatic actuator for heavy-vehicle braking, respectively. Leon Henderson, a new postgraduate at Cambridge, made his CVDC debut and introduced his preliminary work on emergency braking strategies for heavy vehicles.
Arvin-Meritor, Firestone, Goodyear, Haldex, and Volvo all presented on new developments in their respective corporations at what was the first non-Firestone meeting held at the FTC. The FTC was first opened in 2008 and members were given a fascinating tour of the new facility.
The members in attendance approved the Core Program of Research for 2011, though uncertainty remains over the continuity of postdoctoral funding beyond this autumn.
The next CVDC meeting will be held in mid-October 2010 at MIRA, hosted by Haldex. This meeting promises to be a unique, 2-day session encompassing both a CVDC meeting and a demonstration of members’ experimental project vehicles.
Presentations from this meeting and the above mentioned papers are available in the Members’ Area.
Further information on the CVDC can be found here.
CVDC Work Illustrates the Balance of Competing Needs at International Conference
MELBOURNE, Australia
The results of CVDC-funded and other affiliated work was presented in March at the 11th Heavy Vehicle Transport Technology (HVTT) symposium in Melbourne, Victoria. Professor David Cebon and Will Goodrum presented results from work on the actively-steered B-double project, advanced pneumatics for heavy-vehicle braking, improving the energy efficiency of heavy vehicles, and a new method of modelling traffic for pavement damage calculations, to a cross-disciplinary audience of international experts. The theme of HVTT 11 was "balancing competing needs"; a task well understood and highlighted by the breadth of work and expertise of the members of the CVDC. Of primary concern for all attendees at HVTT 11 was seeing greater community engagement, environmental stewardship, and technological innovation by the heavy vehicle sector in the future. HVTT 11 was held in the State Library of Victoria from 14-16 March and was attended by 150 representatives from heavy vehicle companies, road transport authorities, and academia from around the world.
More information on HVTT 11 can be found on the conference website.
More information on the work presented by the CVDC at HVTT 11 can be found in our Members’ Area.
Reducing and Measuring Fuel Consumption, Without the Costs
CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom
Newly published work from the CVDC reveals that larger vehicle configurations are always more energy efficient when fully loaded. Although current trends in goods distribution are leaning towards centralised dispatch using smaller, 4-axle rigid trucks, this method of transportation was found to increase fuel consumption in an urban cycle by 35% as compared with using longer combination vehicles. Running partially laden vehicles increased fuel consumption per freight task by as much as 65%. Despite popularity in other research and European regulation, results from this study demonstrated that reducing aerodynamic drag and increasing engine efficiency net relatively small gains in fuel economy when compared with other factors, such as increasing vehicle size and using regenerative braking.
Researchers validated a simulation of HGV fuel consumption without expensive testing facilities using novel, simple, and common-sense experimental tests. The benchmarked mathematical model predicted the fuel consumption over a 4km drive cycle for a 37 tonne semi-trailer combination to within 1.4%. Work within the CVDC on the issue of energy efficient transportation is continuing to show which methods are effective, and which are just hot air.
More information on continuing work within CVDC on regenerative braking and other strategies for improving heavy vehicle energy efficiency can be found on the Projects page.
EPSRC Project Completed
CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom
The introduction of Long Combination Vehicles (LCVs) to Britain could reduce losses due to traffic congestion by £2.1 billion, says a recent CVDC report summarizing three and a half years worth of research. The EPSRC project titled 'Active Multi-Axle Steering of Heavy Goods Vehicles' sought to address the three major technical hurdles facing the adoption of LCVs in the UK: manoeuvrability, high-speed stability, and reversibility.
By developing advanced control strategies for the CVDC steering trailer, researchers were able to eliminate roundabout entry tail swing. In high-speed lane change manoeuvres, active steering improved rollover stability by reducing lateral acceleration by 27%.
Experiments with the new CVDC B-double configuration revealed that unsteered LCVs cannot negotiate a UK roundabout. With active steering, the CVDC B-train used less swept-path width than a conventional semi-trailer and produced no tail swing. By using path-following control, the B-double configuration navigated a standard UK roundabout in reverse with virtually zero path error; an impossible task for an unsteered vehicle.
More details and references can be found in the project summary report here.
Videos of the CVDC semitrailer performing roundabout manoeuvres can be found here.
Videos of the new CVDC B-train can be found here.
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company joins CVDC
CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom
 The CVDC is excited to welcome Goodyear to the consortium. Goodyear is one of the world's largest tyre production companies, manufacturing its products in more than 60 facilities in 26 countries. Goodyear has a strong commitment to research and innovation and will bring decades worth of experience to CVDC projects.
For more information on Goodyear, please follow the link on the Sponsors page.
Intec joins the CVDC
CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom
  The CVDC is pleased to welcome Intec Dynamics Ltd. to the consortium.
Intec Dynamics Ltd. is an engineering software company specializing in a simulation package called SIMPACK which is used for the analysis of complex mechanical systems.
The CVDC partnership will focus on applying the versatile SIMPACK software to study the behavior of multi-unit vehicle combinations over a range of configurations and driving scenarios.
 SIMPACK is used by several truck manufactures, such as MAN, Renault Trucks and Daimler Trucks (Mercedes) for a number of wide ranging applications,
such as load data generation for durability studies, brake design for multi-axle vehicles, rollover risk assessment, handling and ride-comfort analysis as well as for producing high-fidelity real-time models for HIL-testing.
About the Consortium
The 'Cambridge Vehicle Dynamics Consortium' is a group of manufacturers from the heavy
truck industry which has joined forces with engineers from Cambridge
University to develop safer and more 'road-friendly' heavy vehicles.
The Consortium includes companies from various sectors of the industry concerned with vehicle
dynamics and suspension design. The current members are:
We are also extremely grateful for the support of a number of other companies and individuals.
The membership is continuing to expand, and companies are being sought from other sectors of
the heavy vehicle industry. By having just one member company from each sector, the
companies can meet and work together in a non-competing, co-operative environment.
The main focus of the Consortium's research is to develop improved suspensions which
maximise truck safety, minimise road damage and improve driver ride comfort and vehicle
body vibration. The research is concentrating on optimising existing suspension components
and is investigating advanced concept suspensions with computer-controlled 'active' and
'semi-active' elements. The work involves computer modelling, laboratory testing of
prototype hardware and field trials of instrumented vehicles.
Members of the Consortium pay an annual membership fee and provide contributions 'in kind'
to assist the research. The Steering Committee consists of representatives of each sponsor
and University researchers. It meets twice yearly, proposes research projects and monitors
performance.
See our invitation to industry document for further information
on the consortium. Any other questions can be answered by
contacting Dr David Cebon, at
dc@eng.cam.ac.uk
| ![[Univ of Cambridge]](images/uniban-s.gif)
