CFD Approach for Vehicle's Aerodynamic Drag and Lift Optimization

The regulation of green house gases to control global warming and rapidly increasing fuel prices have given tremendous pressure on the design engineers to enhance the current designs of the automobile using minimal changes in the shapes. To fulfil the above requirements, design engineers have been using the concepts of aerodynamics to enhance the efficiency of automobiles. Although aerodynamics depends on so many factors, this research concentrates on external devices, which affect the flow around the automobile body to reduce the resistance of the vehicle in normal working conditions. An automotive prototype body is modelled and studied using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The limitations of conventional wind tunnel experiment and rapid developments in computer hardware, considerable efforts have been invested in the last decade to study vehicle aerodynamics computationally. In the recent times, CFD simulations, with the advent of computer architectures with superfast processing capabilities are rapidly emerging as an attractive alternative to conventional wind tunnel tests which are either too restrictive or expensive, for aerodynamic styling of a car. The project aims to modify the outer surface of an automotive aerodynamically with the help of aerodynamic aids in order to reduce the effect of drag forces and lift forces on the vehicle. Project involves the study of different heights of vortex generators and different angles of spoilers through CFD and the optimum designs are further studied for combined results. It is expected to attain vehicle Drag Reduction and Lift Reduction.