To Improve the Aerodynamic Performance of a model

hatchback car with the addition of a rear roof spoiler.

Dileep P. Menon*, Samir Kamat G.*, Yagnavalkya S. Mukkamala*, Prakash S. Kulkarni
#
*- Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
cooresponding author : email id - dileepmenon92@yahoo.com
postal address - 4, Luckmudoss Street. Chennai-600003
#
- Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Abstract
In the present study, a model hatchback car is considered to be an Ahmed Body. The Ahmed Body represents a
simple ground vehicle geometry in the form of a bluff body. It has a shape that is simple enough to allow for
accurate flow simulation but retains some important practical features relevant to automobile bodies. As the demand
for fuel increases, it is important to design vehicles with increased aerodynamic performance to obtain a higher fuel
economy and produce lesser emissions. The drag force on a vehicle is greatly dependent on the wake formed behind
the vehicle, hence it is essential to reduce the flow separation at the rear to recover the downstream pressure. The
aim of this project is to decrease the drag force and increase the cross-wind stability of the model by the addition of
a rear roof spoiler. Further the effect of varying the curvature and length of the spoiler on the drag force and
normalized yaw moment will be studied.
Keywords: Bluff body, Aerodynamic performance, Cross-wind stability, Spoiler




16th Annual CFD Symposium, August 11-12,2014, Bangalore
Fig. 1. Ahmed Body view (a) 35 rear slant (b) 35 rear slant with roof spoiler

Fig. 2. Schematic of Ahmed Body model with rear roof spoiler

Meshing and Simulation Details
The computational domain is defined by the half body. It starts two body length in front and three body lengths
behind the Ahmed Body. The half body assumption is used because the model is symmetric and the researched
solution is a steady flow. Numerical Simulations are carried out by meshing the entire computational domain with
tetrahedral elements. An inflation layer consisting of 5 prismatic elements with a growth rate of 20% is generated on
the body to capture the boundary layer effects.
The steady state RANS equations are solved using the commercial CFD software
Fluent to compute the flow field over the model. The fluid medium used is air with an inlet velocity of 40m/s
contributing to a Reynolds number of 5.12x10^6. The pressure at the outlet is considered to be 1 atm. The
turbulence model used is k- SST model with enhanced wall treatments. The use of a k- formulation in the inner
parts of the boundary layer makes the model directly usable all the way down to the wall through the viscous sub-
layer. The No Slip boundary condition is imposed on the Ahmed Body and road. The first order upwind
differencing scheme is used for the initial iterations and changed to the second order upwind scheme for better
convergence and stability.
A grid independence study was done for verifying the drag coefficient obtained
from the simulation. The domain was split to 4 million, 6 million and 9 million cells respectively and simulated
individually. It was found that the drag coefficient varied within 1% of the mean cd value for all the simulated cases
as shown in table 1.


Table. 1: Output parameters with different cell densities for Ahmed Body with rear roof spoiler
Cells cd cm Drag Force(N) Lift Force(N)
4.6 million 0.2655 0.22053 14.97 0.623

6 million 0.27135 0.21799 15.2948 1.0008

8.7million 0.26965 0.21657 15.19913 0.6953

Results and Discussions





Fig. 3. Contours of velocity in symmetric plane for flow over: (a) Ahmed Body; (b) Ahmed Body with roof spoiler











Fig. 5. Streamlines in symmetric plane for flow over: (e) Ahmed Body; (f) Ahmed Body with roof spoiler


Fig. 4. Contours of static pressure in symmetric plane for flow over: (c) Ahmed Body; (d) Ahmed Body with roof spoiler


a b
c d
e f





Fig. 6. Surface plot of pressure coefficient over Ahmed Body on symmetry plane






Fig. 7. Surface plot of pressure coefficient over Ahmed Body with rear spoiler on symmetry plane

Table. 2: Comparison of drag force for the two cases
Ahmed Body Drag Force (N) cd
Without spoiler 15.86 0.281
With rear spoiler 15.1* 0.2688*
*- average

Conclusion
It was found that there was a 4.3% reduction in drag coefficient on adding a rear roof spoiler to the model. This
reduction in drag force is attributed to the increased pressure recovery at the rear of the model near the roof spoiler.
Further work will be carried out to understand how the curvature and dimensions of the spoiler affect the wake
formed at the rear of the model. The cross-wind stability of the model by the addition of the spoiler will also be
investigated.

Upper Surface
Lower Surface

Upper Surface
Lower Surface