Faster design of road vehicles
Most industries adopt Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for optimising their design processes in terms of cost and time required to perform reliable wind tunnel testing. This is mainly due to the advantages they offer, such as reduced effort to generate numerical computations, minimised total computation time and increased accuracy. However, CFD codes are still unreliable when simulating complicated turbulence phenomena, like those taking place in vehicle aerodynamics. Urged by this shortcoming, this project developed a set of tools for accurate and efficient computation of external aerodynamics in vehicles. Compared to current tests, the new tools will allow more cost-effective and faster computations during design, leading to optimisation of CFD-wind tunnel. Thereby, new and verified turbulence models are satisfactorily robust, high performing and very helpful for simulating real-life external aerodynamics of vehicles. Built on basic physics laws, such as Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations, the new advanced turbulence models are capable of more accurately predicting flow dynamics. Additionally, the project also employed Large Eddy Simulation (LES) for dealing with flows around protrusions, such as mirrors. Other actual problems successfully encountered were separation on curved roof and rear window, wake/road interaction behind a vehicle and flow between rotating wheels and wheel arches. Supported by evidence derived from several well-selected experiments, the models are expected to greatly benefit the automotive industry during design of automobile body shapes. By accurately predicting aerodynamic noise, reduction of force on windows and other similar issues, designers may develop higher performance, safer and less fuel consuming road vehicles. Moreover, CFD vendors are expected to implement the new turbulence models in current tools offering a wider list of modelling options for their customers.
