Drag reduction mechanisms on a generic square-back vehicle using an optimised yaw-insensitive base cavity

Regulations on global greenhouse gas emission are driving the development of more energy-efficient passenger vehicles. One of the key factors influencing energy consumption is the aerodynamic drag where a large portion of the drag is associated with the base wake. Environmental conditions such as wind can increase the drag associated with the separated base flow. This paper investigates an optimised yaw-insensitive base cavity on a square-back vehicle in steady crosswind. The test object is a simplified model scale bluff body, the Windsor geometry, with wheels. The model is tested experimentally with a straight cavity and a tapered cavity. The taper angles have been optimised numerically to improve the robustness to side wind in relation to drag. Base pressures and tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry of the full wake were measured in the wind tunnel. The results indicate that a cavity decreases the crossflow within the wake, increasing base pressure, therefore lowering drag. The additional optimised cavity tapering further reduces crossflow and results in a smaller wake with less losses. The overall wake unsteadiness is reduced by the cavity by minimising mixing in the shear layers as well as dampening wake motion. However, the coherent wake motions, indicative of a balanced wake, are increased by the investigated cavities. Graphical abstract

Mitigation of Antisymmetric Mode and Drag with Base Cavities

Experiments were carried out to examine the impact of base cavities on the base pressure fluctuations and total drag of a cylindrical afterbody for freestream Mach numbers 0.6-1.5. Significant improvement in the base pressure and a substantial reduction in the afterbody drag was noticed in the presence of a base cavity at subsonic Mach numbers. However, on increasing the cavity length beyond a certain value its performance deteriorates. At supersonic Mach numbers their effectiveness drops drastically. Tones in the spectra can be classified into two types depending on the dominant azimuthal mode which is either 0 or 1 and are referred to as symmetric and an antisymmetric mode, respectively. Spectra at subsonic Mach numbers exhibit tones which are related either to mode 0 or 1. However, at supersonic Mach numbers only tones related to mode 0 exist. The base cavity either, effectively suppress the antisymmetric mode or modify it into a symmetric mode resulting in mitigation of the tones related to antisymmetric mode.

Characteristics of open cavity flow with floor inclinations at M = 2.0

Experimental studies on open cavity flows at supersonic speed of M = 2.0 were carried out. Oil flow visualization tests were made to understand the steady features of the surface flow field. Unsteady pressure measurements were done at five locations inside the cavity and pressure spectrum of these measurements were obtained. Cavity floor was made inclined to influence the flow directing towards the cavity leading edge with both, a favourable and adverse slope, by giving a positive and negative inclination angles to the floor, respectively. It is observed that the negative inclinations to the cavity floor behaves in a similar way to the base cavity, but a positive inclination helps to reduce the fluctuating pressures by 80% and reduce OASPL to the order of 14 dB and more.

High-resolution structural insights into the heliorhodopsin family

Rhodopsins are the most abundant light-harvesting proteins. A new family of rhodopsins, heliorhodopsins (HeRs), has recently been discovered. Unlike in the known rhodopsins, in HeRs the N termini face the cytoplasm. The function of HeRs remains unknown. We present the structures of the bacterial HeR-48C12 in two states at the resolution of 1.5 Å, which highlight its remarkable difference from all known rhodopsins. The interior of HeR’s extracellular part is completely hydrophobic, while the cytoplasmic part comprises a cavity (Schiff base cavity [SBC]) surrounded by charged amino acids and containing a cluster of water molecules, presumably being a primary proton acceptor from the Schiff base. At acidic pH, a planar triangular molecule (acetate) is present in the SBC. Structure-based bioinformatic analysis identified 10 subfamilies of HeRs, suggesting their diverse biological functions. The structures and available data suggest an enzymatic activity of HeR-48C12 subfamily and their possible involvement in fundamental redox biological processes.

A numerical investigation of the asymmetric wake mode of a squareback Ahmed body – effect of a base cavity

Numerical simulations of the turbulent flow over the flat backed Ahmed model at Reynolds number $Re\simeq 4\times 10^{5}$ are conducted using a lattice Boltzmann solver to clarify the mean topology of the static symmetry-breaking mode of the wake. It is shown that the recirculation region is occupied by a skewed low pressure torus, whose part closest to the body is responsible for an extra low pressure imprint on the base. Shedding of one-sided vortex loops is also reported, indicating global quasi-periodic dynamics in conformity with the seminal work of Grandemange et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 722, 2013, pp. 51–84). Despite the limited low frequency resolution of the simulation, power spectra of the lateral velocity fluctuations at different locations corroborate the presence of this quasi-periodic mode at a Strouhal number of $St=0.16\pm 0.03$. A shallow base cavity of $5\,\%$ of the body height reduces the drag coefficient by $3\,\%$ but keeps the recirculating torus and its interaction with the base mostly unchanged. The drag reduction lies in a global constant positive shift of the base pressure distribution. For a deep base cavity of $33\,\%$ of the body height, a drag reduction of $9.5\,\%$ is obtained. It is accompanied by a large elongation of the recirculation inside the cavity that considerably attenuates the low pressure sources therein together with a symmetrization of the low pressure torus. The global quasi-periodic mode is found to be inhibited by the cavity.