The transportation and mobility industry trend toward electrification is rapidly
evolving and in this specific scenario, wind noise aeroacoustics becomes one of
the major concerns for OEMs, as new propulsion systems are notably quieter than
traditional ones. There is, however, very limited references available in the
literature regarding validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
simulations applied to the prediction of aeroacoustics contribution to the noise
generated by large commercial trucks. Thus, in this work, high-fidelity CFD
simulations are performed using lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), which uses very
large eddy simulation (VLES) turbulence model and compared to on-road physical
tests of a heavy-duty truck to validate the approach. Furthermore, the effect of
realistic wind conditions is also analyzed. Two different truck configurations
are considered: one with side mirror (Case A) and the other without (Case B)
side mirrors. The main focus of this work is to assess the accuracy of the
commercial CFD software PowerFLOW® to predict greenhouse wind noise analysis for
heavy vehicles as a tool to complement or replace physical testing during the
vehicle design process. From this study, we found that external microphone
measurements at the passenger-side glass demonstrate strong correlation with
simulation results, highlighting the importance of including a typical level of
on-road free-stream turbulence to achieve accurate sound pressure level (SPL)
correlations for the full frequency range available from the physical test
(i.e., 100 Hz to 2000 Hz) for both configurations.
