Determination of Vehicle Frontal Area Using Image Processing

2013-01-0203

04/08/2013

Event
SAE 2013 World Congress & Exhibition
Authors Abstract
Content
The projected frontal area of a vehicle has a significant impact on aerodynamic drag, and thus is an important parameter, for vehicle development, benchmarking, and modeling. However, determining vehicle frontal area can be tedious, time consuming, expensive, or inaccurate. Existing methods include analysis of engineering drawings, vehicle projections, 3D scanners, planimeter measurements from photographs, and estimations using vehicle dimensions. Currently accepted approximation methods can be somewhat unreliable.
This study focuses on introducing a method to find vehicle frontal area using digital images and subtraction functions via MATLABs' Image Processing Toolbox. In addition to an overview of the method, this paper describes several variables that were examined to optimize and improve the process such as camera position, surface glare, and vehicle shadow effects.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2013-01-0203
Pages
12
Citation
Brennan, D., Worm, J., and Morgan, C., "Determination of Vehicle Frontal Area Using Image Processing," SAE Technical Paper 2013-01-0203, 2013, https://doi.org/10.4271/2013-01-0203.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Apr 8, 2013
Product Code
2013-01-0203
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English