A Wind Tunnel Study Correlating the Aerodynamic Effect of Cooling Flows for Full and Reduced Scale Models of a Passenger Car

2010-01-0759

04/12/2010

Event
SAE 2010 World Congress & Exhibition
Authors Abstract
Content
In the early stages of an aerodynamic development programme of a road vehicle it is common to use wind tunnel scale models. The obvious reasons for using scale models are that they are less costly to build and model scale wind tunnels are relatively inexpensive to operate. It is therefore desirable for model scale testing to be utilized even more than it is today. This however, requires that the scale models are highly detailed and that the results correlate with those of the full size vehicle.
This paper presents a correlation study that was carried out in the Chalmers and Volvo Car Aerodynamic Wind Tunnels. The aim of the study was to investigate how successfully a correlation of the cooling air flow between a detailed scale model and a real full size vehicle could be achieved.
Results show limited correlation on absolute global aerodynamic loads, but relative good correlation in drag and lift increments. Furthermore, changes in local surface pressure on the underbody and base are in good agreement.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2010-01-0759
Pages
21
Citation
Christoffersen, L., Landström, C., and Walker, T., "A Wind Tunnel Study Correlating the Aerodynamic Effect of Cooling Flows for Full and Reduced Scale Models of a Passenger Car," SAE Technical Paper 2010-01-0759, 2010, https://doi.org/10.4271/2010-01-0759.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Apr 12, 2010
Product Code
2010-01-0759
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English