A Study of Passenger Car Body Sealing and Interior Airflow Performance Characteristics

A survey and analysis of the body sealing and interior airflow performance of a range of medium-sized passenger cars has been conducted. These studies have been carried out under static and dynamic exterior airflow conditions in a full scale wind tunnel, at airspeeds of up to 96km/h, and the ventilation performance of the vehicles characterized in terms of body leakage and extract airflow, equivalent hole size, total interior airflow and blower power requirements. In addition, more fundamental laboratory studies of the effect of interior airflow path and extract geometry have been conducted, leading to an enhanced understanding of the results obtained from the full-vehicle work.