Technical Paper
Recent Advances in External Aerodynamics Simulation of a Hatchback Production Car
2013-11-27
2013-01-2906
In the present scenario wherein the cost of fuel is ever increasing, maximizing fuel efficiency of a vehicle is one of the prime areas of focus for all the OEM's. Aerodynamic drag forms a prominent portion of the resistive forces acting on a moving car. In the early design phase, engineers are interested to get insight into the flow field around the vehicle so as to take informed design decisions. It would be difficult to build different designs and physically test them. Thus it becomes necessary for all the OEM's to use simulation to predict resistive forces and also to develop a robust simulation procedure which would help them to predict with confidence. Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes Equation (RANS) method is used to simulate external Aerodynamics, which is a steady state simulation methodology. The use of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) to model transient simulation is not feasible for production purpose because of huge mesh especially near the walls.