Washington, March 18: A mechanical engineer of Indian origin is developing techniques that will help improve gas mileage by reducing the drag of vehicles.

Drag is an aerodynamic force that is the result of resistance a body encounters when it moves in a liquid or gaseous medium, such as air.

Reduction in drag means less fuel would be required to overcome the fluid resistance encountered by the moving vehicle.

Ramesh K. Agarwal, the William Palm Professor of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has successfully demonstrated that the drag of airplane wings and cars/trucks can be reduced by employing the active flow control (AFC) technology.

The idea behind the AFC is to deploy actuators on the surface of these vehicles to modify the flow in a way that the overall resistance is reduced.

Using computational fluid dynamics software, Agarwal has found that the actuators modify the flow, which results in drag reduction, which in turn reduces the fuel amount needed.

“The most promising actuators are the so called synthetic jet or oscillatory jet actuators which are embedded in the surface of the body (an airplane wing for example), and essentially perform injection and suction of the fluid from the surface in a periodic manner,” said Agarwal.

He has demonstrated that the transonic drag of an airplane wing can be reduced by 12 to 15 percent with the incorporation of three-ounce actuators, about 20 to 30 spaced optimally on the surface of the wing.

“We use the genetic algorithms and artificial neural net algorithms to optimize the placement of actuators,” Agarwal said.

Agarwal’s students have recently applied the concept on cars and trucks and have achieved 15 to 18 percent reduction in drag by placing the actuators on the back surface of these vehicles.

Although the technology has not yet been deployed on any commercially available vehicle, it is being researched and investigated by airplane and automobile companies worldwide.

“There are approximately 100 million cars and trucks on the road in the United States alone and hundreds of millions more worldwide. Similarly, there will be a substantial increase in air transportation worldwide,” said Aggarwal.

“The AFC technology can therefore play an important role in fuel conservation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,” he added. (ANI)