Abstract:
Gaseous and particulate pollutants which are emitted from automotive vehicles can infiltrate the
surrounding cars exposing drivers and passengers to toxic substances with serious adverse health
effects. Since the infiltration process depends on the outside pollutants concentration, we undertook
wind tunnel measurements to assess their dispersion and interaction with the flow dynamic in the
near-wake of a vehicle model. Concurrently field measurements were conducted to assess the
pollutant concentration levels inside a car cabin. On the one hand, the results dealing with the
dispersion in wind tunnels have shown that the nanoparticles issued form tailpipe exhaust gas
accumulate in the core of the vortices that appear in the vehicle near-wake. This behaviour plays an
important role on their infiltration since the cabin air intake is located in front of most of cars. On
the other hand, the pollutant on-board measurements have shown that the concentrations of NOx
and ultrafine particles (UFP) inside the cabin can reach 9 and 14 times respectively the
concentration outside
