At the 2014 Mid America Trucking Show, aerodynamic trailer device maker SmartTruck noted that its UT6-Plus product package complies with the new “Elite” level designation for trailer aerodynamic devices announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its SmartWay program at the 2014 Technology & Maintenance Council in early March.
Mitch Greenberg, president of SmartTruck, told Fleet Owner at the show that the UT6-Plus package can act as a “one-stop-shop” to help carriers attain SmartWay Elite status; meaning that the entire package delivers fuel savings of 9% or better.
The EPA is also expanding the types of tests that can be used to verify the potential fuel savings for trailer devices as well, which SmartTruck is already taking advantage of.
Greenberg said the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s (UT-C) National Center for Computational Engineering (UT-C’s SimCenter) recently completed a study of trailer aerodynamic devices that included SmartTruck’s base trailer aerodynamics system, showing that the company’s base product package can deliver fuel savings of approximately 6%.
The UT-C study comes on the heels of another third-party computational fluid dynamics (CFD) test conducted by CD-adapco and released in October 2013, Greenberg noted, which showed SmartTruck’s base UnderTray product produced a roughly 7% gain in fuel economy.
He added that the fuel savings SmartTruck’s UT6-Plus fuel savings were verified based on multiple testing protocols, including coast down testing and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The company has also introduced a new 15-year limited warranty on its UnderTray products, Greenberg said.
