An Automated Shape Optimization Procedure for Drag Reduction of Ground Vehicles

In this paper, an automated procedure that would help reduce the drag of a moving body was established. This is achieved through a process that determines the optimum shape of the body. This procedure reduces the analysis time for repetitive runs through automatic Computer Aided Design (CAD) model generation, CAD-CFD interfacing, and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis. As a case study, a set of simplified CAD models are generated as per user specifications. The CAD models are generated automatically by introducing a varying geometrical parameter on a base model. A master script exports these CAD models to a meshing package that generates the mesh for each case. A CFD package imports the meshes and identical flow parameters are applied in each case. CFD analyses are performed sequentially and the drag coefficient values are obtained. The final value of the minimum drag coefficient along with the corresponding model shape is then made available to the user.