Search Results

In vehicle development, reducing noise is a major concern to ensure passenger comfort. As electric vehicles become more common and engine and vibration noises improve, the aerodynamic noise generated around the vehicle becomes relatively more noticeable. In particular, the fluctuating wind noise, which is affected by turbulence in the atmosphere, gusts of wind, and wake caused by the vehicle in front, can make passengers feel uncomfortable. However, the cause of the fluctuating wind noise has not been fully understood, and a solution has not yet been found. The reason for this is that fluctuating wind noise cannot be quantitatively evaluated using common noise evaluation methods such as FFT and STFT. In addition, previous studies have relied on road tests, which do not provide reproducible conditions due to changing atmospheric conditions. To address this issue, automobile manufacturers are developing devices to generate turbulence in wind tunnels.

In open-grille vehicle aerodynamics simulation using computational fluid dynamics, in addition to basic flow characteristics, such as turbulent flow with a Reynolds number of several million on the bluff body, it is important to accurately estimate the cooling air flow introduced from the front opening. It is therefore necessary to reproduce the detailed geometry of the entire vehicle including the engine bay as precisely as possible. However, there is a problem of generating a good-quality calculation grid with a small workload. It usually takes several days to a week for the pretreatment process to make the geometry data ‘clean’ or ‘watertight’. The authors proposed a computational method for complex geometries with a hierarchical Cartesian grid and a topology-independent immersed boundary method with dummy cells that discretize the geometry on a cell-by-cell basis and can set an imaginary point arbitrarily.

Because of rising demands to improve aerodynamic performance owing to its impact on vehicle dynamics, efforts were previously made to reduce aerodynamic lift and yawing moment based on steady-state measurements of aerodynamic forces. In recent years, increased research on dynamic aerodynamics has partially explained the impact of aerodynamic forces on vehicle dynamics. However, it is difficult to measure aerodynamic forces while a vehicle is in motion, and also analyzing the effect on vehicle dynamics requires measurement of vehicle behavior, amount of steering and other quantities noiselessly, as well as an explanation of the mutual influence with aerodynamic forces. Consequently, the related phenomena occurring in the real world are still not fully understood.