Large Eddy Simulation on the Unsteady Aerodynamics of a Heavy Duty Truck in Wind Gust

Unsteady aerodynamic forces acting on a full-scale heavy duty truck were investigated using a large-eddy simulation technique. The numerical method adopted was first validated on a static condition measured at the DNW German-Dutch wind tunnels. After the correction of the blockage ratio in the wind tunnel, the drag coefficient obtained by our numerical method showed good agreement with the experimental data within the errors of less than 5%. Effect of an air deflector mounted on the top of a cabin was also discussed. Then the method was applied to non-stationary conditions in which the truck was subjected to ambient perturbation of approaching flow. The perturbation of the flow is a model of atmospheric turbulence and sinusoidal crosswind velocity profiles were imposed on the uniform incoming flow with its wavelength comparable to the vehicle length. As a result, it was confirmed that when the wavelength of the crosswind is close to the vehicle length, averaged drag increases by more than 10% and down-force decreases by about 60%, compared with the case without perturbation.