Analysis of Turbulence Models Applied to CFD Drag Simulations of a Small Hatchback Vehicle

2016-36-0201

10/25/2016

Event
25th SAE BRASIL International Congress and Display
Authors Abstract
Content
Thanks to advances in Computational Fluid Dynamics - CFD codes, i.e. algorithms and turbulence models, complex CFD vehicles simulations are increasing not only in academia, but also in the industry itself. The aim of the simulations is to verify the aerodynamic behavior of a car at early stages of the project, when no prototype is available, and to reduce the total aerodynamic development time of a new vehicle.
The turbulence model considered in the CFD simulation should be able to capture the main flow effects around the vehicle. Most importantly, the predicted total drag value of the vehicle has to be comparable to the values obtained in wind tunnel tests. The main focus of the presented work is a comparison of wind tunnel and CFD results of the same small production hatchback vehicle. Different turbulence models are considered in the simulation ranging from steady state approaches, k-epsilon and k-omega SST, to transient models, DDES and the newly developed Stress-Blended Eddy Simulation - SBES. Flow profiles of the different turbulence models are shown in order to analyze flow effects around the vehicle. The presented results show a good agreement between test and simulation.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2016-36-0201
Pages
11
Citation
Buscariolo, F., Magazoni, F., Wolf, M., Maruyama, F. et al., "Analysis of Turbulence Models Applied to CFD Drag Simulations of a Small Hatchback Vehicle," SAE Technical Paper 2016-36-0201, 2016, https://doi.org/10.4271/2016-36-0201.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Oct 25, 2016
Product Code
2016-36-0201
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English