A novel method for simulating the relative motions of the wheels and moving ground for road vehicle aerodynamics is presented. The method revisits an old concept where two identical vehicles are used and positioned so that they are mirror images, with the ground being represented by the horizontal plane of symmetry. The method involves double symmetry, where two half models (e.g. a car split down the vertical centerline) contact at the rotating wheel contact patches and the resulting (opened) vehicle halves lie on a reflection plane. This can either be the tunnel floor or the equivalent CFD plane. For some forms of physical testing this offers advantages (such as easy access to wheel cavities and requiring only one vehicle) but sealing the gap between the tunnel floor and the vehicle halves can interfere with the force balance accuracy and problems can arise with time-varying flows crossing the time averaged zero flow boundary. This paper describes the concept and CFD and model-scale EFD evaluations which were found to compare well. The EFD coefficients are slightly larger than the standard Ahmed body drag coefficient, but were found within 2% margin. A contributing factor to this could be the model imperfections in the experiments, air leakage along the sealing, body and floor interaction etc. The double symmetry concept on Ahmed model geometry has been investigated, along with Reynolds number behavior. It was found that, drag coefficients exhibited almost insensitivity to changes in Reynolds number, over the test speed range. It has been noted that: 1. This technique is useful for experimental examination of local flows in wheel, wheel housing, underbody and other similar areas of a test vehicle. 2. This technique needs only single model (split down the centerline) and can work with simple measurement mechanism, simulating the moving ground while rotating the wheels. 3. The draw backs include the transient traverse flow across the symmetric plane (simulating the moving ground), sealing the gap around the body and the ground (for measuring the forces only on the test bodies) and splitting the test vehicle. Note that this concept can only simulate the zero-yaw angle flows.


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    Title :

    A novel mirror-image technique for wheel and ground simulation in automotive wind-tunnels


    Additional title:

    Ein neuartiges Spiegelbildverfahren für die Rad- und Bodensimulation in Kraftfahrzeugwindkanälen


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2005


    Size :

    6 Seiten, 17 Bilder, 9 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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