An experimental investigation was conducted to better understand the aerodynamics of magnetically levitated (MagLev) high speed vehicles operating in ground effect. A high speed moving track system was designed and developed to be used in the Virginia Tech Stability wind tunnel. Flowfield surveys confirmed the system was providing proper flow simulation. Aerodynamic tests were conducted on two vehicle geometries, Mag950 and Magl002. Tests included force and moment measurements, surface pressure measurements, vehicle wake flowfield survey, and flow visualization using tufts. The results showed a higher drag coefficient when the vehicle is operating InGround- Effect (IGE) versus Out-of-Ground-Effect (OGE), with the Magl002 displaying a slightly less drag than the Mag950 vehicle geometry. The experimental values showed higher drag compared with the available computational results by Grumman. The brief chart below shows the summary of force and moment results. Contrary to expectation, higher positive lift was observed with the vehicles operating IOE. The computational results also showed a positive lift at IGE versus OGE. The hot-wire wake data and tuft photos gave results consistent with Grumman's computational calculations. Overall, the Mag 1 002 vehicle geometry seems to be a better candidate for further development. / Master of Science

In the last few years, scientific consensus is that emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere is contributing to changes in the earth's climate. While uncertainty remains over the pace and dimensions of the change, a consensus on the need for action has grown among the public and elected officials. In part, this shift has been accelerated by concern over energy security and rising fuel prices. The new political landscape has led many cities, states, and regions to institute policies aimed at reducing GHG emissions. These policies and emerging initiatives have significant implications for the transportation planning process. The transportation sector accounts for approximately 27% of GHG production in the U.S. (as of 2003) and while the U.S. accounts for only roughly 5% of the world's population, it is estimated that it produces over 20% of the world's GHG emissions. Note that this does not include "lifecycle" emissions that result from the processes undertaken to extract, manufacture, and transport fuel. Carbon dioxide represents approximately 96% of the transportation sector's radiative forcing effects. Unlike conventional air pollutants, carbon dioxide emissions are directly tied to the amount of fuel consumed and its carbon intensity. Therefore, emissions reductions can be achieved by increasing the use of low-carbon fuels, improving fuel economy, or reducing total vehicle miles of travel - often called the three legged stool. (A fourth leg is congestion reduction, at certain optimal speeds). These same factors are related to our use of imported oil, so actions taken to reduce GHG emissions may actually produce benefits in both policy areas. The climatic risks of additional emissions associated with capacity projects must be balanced against the mobility, safety, and economic needs of a community or region. Consequently, this dissertation attempts to quantify the impacts of high-emitting vehicles on the environment and to propose solutions to enhance the currently-used high-emitting vehicle detection procedures. In addition, fuel consumption and emission models for high-speed vehicles are developed in order to provide more reliable estimates of vehicle emissions and study the impact of vehicle speeds on vehicle emissions. The dissertation extends the state-of-the-art analysis of high emitting vehicles (HEVs) by quantifying the network-wide environmental impact of HEVs. The literature reports that 7% to 12% of HEVs account for somewhere between 41% to 63% of the total CO emissions, and 10% are responsible for 47% to 65% of HC emissions, and 10% are responsible for 32% of NOx emissions. These studies, however, are based on spot measurements and do not necessarily reflect network-wide impacts. Consequently, the research presented in this dissertation extends the state-of-knowledge by quantifying HEV contributions on a network level. The study uses microscopic vehicle emission models (CMEM and VT-Micro model) along with pre-defined drive cycles (under the assumption that the composite HEV and VT-LDV3 represent HEVs and NEVs, respectively) in addition to the simulation of two transportation networks (freeway and arterial) to quantify the contributions of HEVs. The study demonstrates that HEVs are responsible for 67% to 87% of HC emissions, 51% to 78% of CO emissions, and 32% to 62% of the NOX emissions for HEV percentages ranging from 5% to 20%. Additionally, the traffic simulation results demonstrate that 10% of the HEVs are responsible for 50% to 66% of the I-81 HC and 59% to 78% of the Columbia Pike HC emissions, 35% to 67% of the I-81 CO and 38% to 69% of the Columbia Pike CO emissions, and 35% to 44% of the I-81 NOX and 35% to 60% of the Columbia Pike NOX emissions depending on the percentage of the normal-emitting LDTs to the total NEVs. HEV emission contributions to total HC and CO emissions appear to be consistent with what is reported in the literature. However, the contribution of NOX emissions is greater than what is reported in the literature. The study demonstrates that the contribution of HEVs to the total vehicle emissions is dependent on the type of roadway facility (arterials vs. highways), the background normal vehicle composition, and the composition of HEVs. Consequently, these results are network and roadway specific. Finally, considering that emission control technologies in new vehicles are advancing, the contribution of HEVs will increase given that the background emission contribution will decrease. Given that HEVs are responsible for a large portion of on-road vehicle emissions, the dissertation proposes solutions to the HEV screening procedures. First, a new approach is proposed for estimating vehicle mass emissions from concentration remote sensing emission measurements using the carbon balance equation in conjunction with either the VT-Micro or PERE fuel consumption rates for the enhancement of current state-of-the-art HEV screening procedures using RSD technology. The study demonstrates that the proposed approach produces reliable mass emission estimates for different vehicle types including sedans, station wagons, full size vans, mini vans, pickup trucks, and SUVs. Second, a procedure is proposed for constructing on-road RS emission standards sensitive to vehicle speed and acceleration levels. The proposed procedure is broadly divided into three sub-processes. In the first process, HE cut points in grams per second are developed as a function of a vehicle's speed and acceleration levels using the VT-Micro and CMEM emission models. Subsequently, the HE cut points in grams per second are converted to concentration emissions cut points in parts per million using the carbon balance equation. Finally, the scale factors are computed using either ASM ETW- and model-year-based standards or engine-displacement-based standards. Given the RS emissions standards, the study demonstrated that the use of on-road RS cut points sensitive to speed and acceleration levels is required in order to enhance the effectiveness of RS. Finally, the dissertation conducted a study to develop fuel consumption and emissions models for high-speed vehicles to overcome the shortcomings of state-of-practice models. The research effort gathered field data and developed models for the estimation of fuel consumption, CO₂, CO, NO, NO2, NOx, HC, and PM emissions at high speeds. A total of nine vehicles including three semi-trucks, three pick-up trucks, and three passenger cars were tested on a nine-mile test track in Pecos, Texas. The fuel consumption and emission rates were measured using two portable emission measurement systems. Models were developed using these data producing minimum errors for fuel consumption, CO₂, NO2, HC, and PM emissions. Alternatively, the NO and NOx emission models produced the highest errors with a least degree of correlation. Given the models, the study demonstrated that the newly constructed models overcome the shortcomings of the state-of-practice models and can be utilized to evaluate the environmental impacts of high speed driving. / Ph. D.

Shock wave-boundary layer interactions (SWBLIs) have been studied ex-tensively due to their practical importance in the design of high speed ve-hicles. These interactions, especially the ones leading to shock induced separation are typically unsteady in nature and can lead to large fluctuating pressure and thermal loads on the structure. The resulting shock oscil-lations are generally composed of high-frequency small-scale oscillations and low-frequency large-scale oscillations, the source of the later being a subject of intense recent debate. Motivated by these debates, we study in the present work, the SWBLI at a compression ramp and on a forward-facing step (FFS) at a Mach number of 2.5. In the case of compression ramps, a few ramp angles are studied ranging from small (10 degree) ramp angle to relatively large values of up to 28 degrees. The FFS configuration, which consists of a 90 degree step of height h, may be thought of as an extreme case of the compression ramp geometry, with the main geometri-cal parameter here being (h/δ), where δis the thickness of the oncoming boundary layer. This configuration is less studied and has some inherent advantages for experimentally studying SWBLI as the size of the separa-tion bubble is large. In the present experimental study, we use high-speed schlieren, unsteady wall pressure measurements, surface oil flow visualiza-tion, and detailed particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements in two orthogonal planes to help understand the features of SWBLI in the com-pression ramp geometry and the forward-facing step case. The SWBLI at a compression ramp has been more widely studied, and our measurements show the general features that have been seen in earlier studies. The upstream boundary layer is found to separate close to the ramp corner forming a separation bubble. The streamwise length of the separa-tion bubble is found to increase with the ramp angle, with a consequent shift of the shock foot further upstream. At very small ramp angles up to 10 degrees, there is no evidence of separation, while at large ramp angles of 28 degrees, the separation bubble extends upstream to about 3.5δ(δ=boundary layer thickness). In all cases, the separation bubble is however very small in the wall normal direction, typically known to be about 0.1δ, and hence is difficult to directly measure in experiments using PIV. Shock foot measurements using PIV show that the shock has a spanwise ripple, which seems directly related to the high-and low-speed streaks in the in-coming boundary layer as recently shown by Ganapathisubramani et al. (2007). The forward-facing step configuration may be thought of as an extreme case of the compression ramp geometry, with a ramp angle of 90 degrees. This configuration has not been extensively studied, and is experimentally convenient due to the large separation bubbles formed ahead of the step. In the present work, extensive measurements of the mean and unsteady flow around this configuration have been done, especially for the case of h/δ=2, where his the step height. Pressure measurements in this case, show clear low-frequency motions of the shock at non-dimensional frequencies of about fh/U∞≈ 0.02. In this case, PIV measurements show the pres-ence of a large mean separation bubble extending to about 4hupstream and about 1hvertically. Instantaneous PIV measurements have been done in both cross-stream (streamwise and wall-normal plane) and in the span-wise (streamwise-spanwise) plane. Instantaneous cross-stream PIV mea-surements show significant variations of the shock location and angle, be-sides large variations in the recirculation region (or separation bubble), this being determined as the area having streamwise velocities less than zero. From a large set of individual PIV instantaneous fields, we can estimate the correlation of the measured shock location to both downstream effects like the area of the recirculation region, and upstream effects like the presence of high-/low-speed streaks in the oncoming boundary layer. We find that the shock location measured from data outside the boundary layer is more highly correlated to downstream effects as measured through the recircu-lation area compared to upstream effects in the boundary layer. However, we find that the shock foot within the boundary layer has ripples in the spanwise direction which are well correlated to the presence of high-/low-speed streaks in the incoming boundary layer. These spanwise ripples are however found to be small (less than one h) compared to the highly three-dimensional shape of the recirculation region with spanwise variation of the order of 3 step heights. In summary, the study shows that the separated region ahead of the step is highly three-dimensional. The shock foot within the boundary layer is found to have ripples that are well correlated to fluctuations in the in-coming boundary layer. However, we find that the large-scale nearly two-dimensional shock motions outside the boundary layer are not well cor-related to the fluctuations in the boundary layer, but are instead well cor-related with the spanwise-averaged separation bubble extent. Hence, the present results suggest that for the forward-facing step configuration, it is the downstream effect caused by the separation bubble that leads to the observed low-frequency shock motions.