Implementation and Analysis of Platoon Catch-Up Scenarios for Heavy Duty Vehicles

Heavy duty vehicle (HDV) platooning is currently a big topic both in the academic world and in industry. Platooning is a smart way to solve problems such as safety, traffic congestion, fuel consumption and hazardous exhaust emissions since its concept enables several vehicles to drive close to each other while maintaining all the security requisites. This way, each vehicle will use the so called slipstream effect, an atmospheric drag reduction that occurs behind a traveling vehicle, consuming less fuel and consequently reducing the exhausted gases. Furthermore, it increases the traffic flow since the distance between vehicles is significantly reduced. The concept and idea of platooning is not particularly new, but only in the last few decades new technology made it possible. HDV platooning scenarios for scale model trucks were developed in the completely renovated Smart Mobility Lab, in KTH, Stockholm. A LabVIEW application was developed giving a robust and stable control of the trucks while following and driving on a newly designed and built road network. The trucks are able to follow a predefined trajectory, change lane and road, platoon with each other with different platooning distances, overtake when the platoon master is changed in order to take the lead of the platoon and change speed to catch up, among other features. The last part of this thesis covers the analysis of the scenarios developed in the testbed. These scenarios represent several situations of HDV platooning, particularly the platoon catch-up case. The main object of this study was the saved fuel due to platooning, and the break-even point, i.e. the distance ratio when neither driving alone nor catching up a platoon ahead would be more feasible. Using real HDV models and their fuel consumption models, simulations were performed in order to check the benefits of platooning and the data got from the scenarios was analyzed. Finally, conclusions were drawn from the experiments where the parameters such as HDV weight, speed increment when catching up and intermediate distance when platooning were different in each trial. It was concluded that a single HDV has to travel 8 to 15 times more than the initial distance that separates it from the HDV(s) ahead and it can save 5 to 13% of fuel depending if catching up a single HDV or a platoon an already existing platoon. Furthermore, it is less beneficial for a platoon already formed to decide to catch up another HDV