scholarly journals Investigation of wheelhouse shapes on the aerodynamic characteristics of a generic car model

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 168781402110668
Author(s):  
Haichao Zhou ◽  
Qingyun Chen ◽  
Runzhi Qin ◽  
Lingxin Zhang ◽  
Huiyun Li

As vehicle speed increases, the aerodynamic drag reduction becomes increasingly significant. The aim of this paper is to find out the effects of the wheelhouse shapes on the aerodynamics of an Ahmed body with a 35 slant angle. In this paper, based on the detached-eddy simulation method, the effects of the three classic different wheelhouse on the aerodynamic performance and near wake of the Ahmed body are presented. The mesh resolution and methodology are validated against the published test results. The results show that the front wheelhouse has a significant impact on the aerodynamic performance of the Ahmed body, leading to different aerodynamic drag forces and flow fields. Enlarging the wheelhouse cavity volume could result in a gradual increase in aerodynamic drag coefficients, the ratio of the wheelhouse cavity volume increased by 2.9% and 9.8%, the drag coefficients increased by 2.5% and 4.5% respectively. The increase in aerodynamic drag was primarily caused by flow separation in the large cavity volume wheelhouse.

2013 ◽  
Vol 376 ◽  
pp. 341-344
Author(s):  
Shan Ling Han ◽  
Ru Xing Yu ◽  
Yu Yue Wang ◽  
Gui Shen Wang

Because crosswind affects drivers to control their vehicles safely, the research on flow characteristics in automotive crosswind has a great significance to improve the crosswind stability of the vehicle. By the steady state numerical simulation method, the aerodynamic characteristics of external flow field of Ahmed body in crosswind was investigated. The Ahmed body with 25° slant angle is built in UG NX. The external flow field of the Ahmed body in the wind direction of 0°, 15º, 30° angle is simulated in XFlow software. According to the map of the pressure and velocity distribution, the flow field both before and after, as well as left and right has significant change as the wind direction angle increased, and the trail turbulence intensity also changes. The changes of aerodynamic force and moment affect the driving stability of a motor vehicle.


2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-71
Author(s):  
Zihao Xie ◽  
Zhenfeng Wu ◽  
Longhui Zhu ◽  
Wangcai Ding

Different types and quantities of freight cars will affect the marshalling forms of freight trains. In order to investi-gate the influence of the marshalling forms on the aerodynamic performance of freight trains under crosswind, three types of freight cars such as box cars, gondola cars and tank cars, were selected to marshal with locomo-tives. This paper used Detached Eddy Simulation method (DES) based on the SST k  ω turbulent model to simulate the aerodynamic performance of the freight train under crosswind. The wind speed, wind angle and train running speed were set as 25m/s, 45° and 100km/h respectively. The influence of different marshalling forms on the aerodynamic performance of the freight train such as aerodynamic drag and lateral force were calculated and compared. The results showed that the marshalling forms have significant effect on the aerody-namic drag and the maximum difference of the aerodynamic drag can reach 20.5%. Furthermore, the variations of the lateral force of the whole train and the locomotive are not apparent. The maximum difference is only 4.3% and 4.1% respectively. However, the changes of marshalling forms have obvious influence on the lateral force of each carriage. The maximum difference of the lateral force of the box car, gondola car and tank car is 17%, 20.1% and 24.1% respectively. The essential reason why the marshalling forms has a significant impact on the aerodynamic performance of the freight train is that there are obvious differences in the volume and shape struc-ture of each railway carriage. The large volume of box cars and the cavity structure of gondola cars make their position a key factor affecting the aerodynamic performance of freight trains. Among the six different marshalling forms selected in this paper, the best marshalling form is: locomotive--gondola car--box car--tank car. Both the aerodynamic drag of the train and the lateral force of the boxcar are the smallest by taking this marshalling form.


Author(s):  
Lingxin Zhang ◽  
Haichao Zhou ◽  
Guolin Wang ◽  
Huiyun Li ◽  
Qingyang Wang

Reducing the aerodynamic drag is one of the most important approaches for the development of energy-saving and environment-friendly automobiles. The tire contour has a great influence on the aerodynamic characteristics of automobiles. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of the tire contour design parameters on the aerodynamic characteristics around a closed wheel, and obtain the optimized tire contour to reduce the automobile aerodynamic drag. A passenger car tire 185/65R14 was selected to conduct the wind tunnel test, and the surface pressure coefficients were used to validate the simulation model established using the detached eddy simulation (DES) model. To decrease tire drag, and taking the upper sidewall height, the tread radii, the tread width, and the transition arc radius of the shoulder as four design variables of contour, a combination of the Latin hypercube experimental design, the Kriging surrogate model, and the adaptive simulated annealing (ASA) algorithm were used to optimize the tire contour design parameters. The changes of flow field around the tire, including the velocity, turbulent kinetic energy, and pressure field were compared and analyzed for further understanding of the drag reduction mechanism. It is found that the aerodynamic drag coefficient of the optimized tire is reduced by 14.5%, and the aerodynamic coefficient drag of the car using the optimized tire is reduced by 7%. The present results are expected to provide useful information for designing new tire structures and improving the aerodynamic performance of the automobile.


Author(s):  
S. Aubrun ◽  
F. Alvi ◽  
A. Leroy ◽  
A. Kourta

A model of a generic vehicle shape, the Ahmed body with a slant angle of 25°, is equipped with an array of blowing steady microjets 6mm downstream of the separation line between the roof and the slanted rear window. The goal of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of this actuation method in reducing the aerodynamic drag, by reducing or suppressing the 3D closed separation bubble located on the slanted surface. The efficiency of this control approach is quantified with the help of aerodynamic load measurements. The changes in the flow field when control is applied are examined using PIV measurements and skin friction visualizations. By activating the steady microjet array, the drag coefficient was reduced by 9 to 11%, depending on the Reynolds number. The modification of the flow topology under progressive flow control is particularly studied.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shi Meng ◽  
Guang Chen ◽  
Dan Zhou ◽  
Shuang Meng

Abstract The effect of the ground condition on unsteady aerodynamic performance of maglev train was numerically investigated with an IDDES (Improved Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation) method. The accuracy of the numerical method has been validated by wind tunnel experiments. The flow structure, slipstream and aerodynamic force around the train under stationary and moving ground conditions were compared. Compared with the stationary ground condition, the vortex structure under the condition of moving ground generated by the wake region is narrower and higher because of the track. Near the nose point of the head and tail vehicles, the peak value of slipstream under the condition of moving ground is slightly higher than that under stationary ground. In the wake area, the effect of the main vortex structure on both sides of the tail vehicle and the track makes the vortex structure in the wake area stronger than that under moving ground, the slipstream peak is larger and the locus thereof is further forward. Under the two ground conditions, the vortex structure is periodically shed from both sides of the train into the wake area, and the shedding frequency of the main vortex under the moving ground condition is lower than that under the stationary ground condition. Moving ground can increase the resistance of the maglev train, reduce the lift of the maglev train, and decrease the standard deviation of the maglev train’s aerodynamic force.


Author(s):  
Hung Tran The ◽  
Masayuki Anyoji ◽  
Takuji Nakashima ◽  
Keigo Shimizu ◽  
Anh Dinh Le

Abstract In this study, skin friction around a ½-scale Ahmed body was measured experimentally at a Reynolds number of Re = 2×105. The slant angle of the Ahmed body was 25° and the yaw angles ranged from 0° to 8°. This study focused on the flow structure on the slant surface under different cross-wind conditions. A force balance system was applied to measure the aerodynamic drag of the model. The global skin-friction topology was measured by applying a luminescent oil layer with a sub-grid data processing algorithm. The method used to measure the skin friction was conducted for the first time on the Ahmed body. The results indicated that the technique is highly capable of extracting the skin-friction topology. For a yaw angle below 3°, the flow on the slant surface was not significantly affected by the cross-wind condition and the drag of the model was nearly constant. However, at yaw angles above 3°, the flow on the slant surface was highly affected by the roof longitudinal vortexes on the windward side, leading to a dramatic increase in the drag of the model. High consistency in the drag and skin-friction fields was observed. The detailed skin-friction structure at different yaw angles will be discussed in this study.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Domenic L. Barsotti ◽  
Eduardo A. Divo ◽  
Sandra K. S. Boetcher

The present study investigates active drag reduction of an Ahmed body with a rear slant angle of 25 deg. The drag is reduced by implementing slot jets on the rear slant and rear surface of the Ahmed body. Transient numerical experiments were conducted using the improved delayed detached eddy simulation (IDDES) turbulence model. Jet velocity, position, size, and angle were parametrically varied, and time-averaged drag coefficients for various jet configurations were calculated. Reynolds numbers based on the length of the Ahmed body were varied, but special focus was given to the high-drag case when Re = 1.4 × 106. It was found that by using slot jets at the rear and rear slant, the drag coefficient was reduced by 22%. In order to investigate the physical mechanisms for the reduction in drag, proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) was used to visualize the turbulent coherent structures in the near wake of the Ahmed body.


Author(s):  
Zhiwei Jiang ◽  
Tanghong Liu ◽  
Houyu Gu ◽  
Zijian Guo

The CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) numerical simulation method with the DES (detached eddy simulation) approach was adopted in this paper to investigate and compare the aerodynamic performance, pressure distributions of the train surface, and flow fields near the train model placed above the subgrade with non-rail, realistic rail, and simplified rail models under crosswind. The numerical methods were verified with the wind tunnel tests. Significant differences in aerodynamic performances of the train body and bogie were found in the cases with and without a rail model as the presence of the rail model had significant impacts on the flow field underneath the vehicle. A larger yaw angle can result in a more significant difference in aerodynamic coefficients. The deviations of the train aerodynamic forces and the pressure distribution on the train body with the realistic and simplified rail models were not significant. It was concluded that a rail model is necessary to get more realistic results, especially for large yaw angle conditions. Moreover, a simplified rectangular rail model is suggested to be employed instead of the realistic rail and is capable to get accurate results.


Author(s):  
Ji-qiang Niu ◽  
Dan Zhou ◽  
Xi-feng Liang

In this study, based on the shear-stress transport κ–ω turbulent model, the improved delayed detached eddy simulation method has been used to simulate the unsteady aerodynamic performance of trains with different obstacle deflectors at two yaw angles (0° and 15°). The numerical algorithm is used and some of the numerical results are verified through wind tunnel tests. By comparing and analysing the obtained results, the effects of the obstacle deflectors on the force of the trains as well as the pressure and flow structure around the trains are elucidated. The results show that the obstacle deflectors primarily affect the flow field at the bottom of the head car as well as the wake flow, and that the internal oblique-type obstacle deflector (IOOD) markedly improves the aerodynamic performance of the trains, by decreasing most of the aerodynamic forces of the train cars and minimising their fluctuations. Further, a nonzero yaw angle weakens or even changes the effect of the IOOD on the aerodynamic forces of the train cars. However, the effect of the IOOD is more on the tail car.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Caidong Wang ◽  
Yu Ning ◽  
Xinjie Wang ◽  
Junqiu Zhang ◽  
Liangwen Wang

Beetles have excellent flight performance. Based on the four-plate mechanism theory, a novel bionic flapping aircraft with foldable beetle wings was designed. It can perform flapping, gliding, wing folding, and abduction/adduction movements with a self-locking function. In order to study the flight characteristics of beetles and improve their gliding performance, this paper used a two-way Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) numerical simulation method to focus on the gliding performance of the bionic flapping aircraft. The effects of elastic model, rigid and flexible wing, angle of attack, and velocity on the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft in gliding flight are analyzed. It was found that the elastic modulus of the flexible hinges has little effect on the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft. Both the rigid and the flexible wings have a maximum lift-to-drag ratio when the attack angle is 10°. The lift increased with the increase of the gliding speed, and it was found that the lift cannot support the gliding movement at low speeds. In order to achieve gliding, considering the weight and flight performance, the weight of the microair vehicle is controlled at about 3 g, and the gliding speed is guaranteed to be greater than 6.5 m/s. The results of this study are of great significance for the design of bionic flapping aircrafts.


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