Combination of body‐fitted and embedded grids for external vehicle aerodynamics

Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to reduce the time it takes to perform external aerodynamic simulations without compromising accuracy. At present, cleaning up CAD data sets, in particular for undercarriage parts, takes several man‐weeks.

Design/methodology/approach

Body‐fitted and embedded mesh techniques are combined to obtain accurate external aerodynamic solutions for realistic car geometries with minimal user intervention. The key idea is to mesh with typical body‐fitted RANS grids the external shape of the vehicle, which is smooth and requires detailed physical modeling. The underhood and undercarriage are treated as embedded surfaces. The flow in this region is massively separated, requiring LES runs and isotropic grids. This makes it a suitable candidate for embedded grids.

Findings

Comparisons with body‐fitted and experimental data for a typical car show that this approach can yield drag predictions with an error less than 5 percent.

Practical implications

The present approach reduces turnaround times for complete car geometries to one to two days, without compromising accuracy.

Originality/value

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such an approach has been tried and validated for external aerodynamics.

Citation

Tilch, R., Tabbal, A., Zhu, M., Decker, F. and Löhner, R. (2008), "Combination of body‐fitted and embedded grids for external vehicle aerodynamics", Engineering Computations, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 28-41. https://doi.org/10.1108/02644400810841404