Abstract
Drag and lift have major effects on the traction of a car. These phenomena of increased resistance lead to a relative increase in fuel consumption as well as an increase in gas emissions. The reduction of air resistance is one of the major areas of work in the automotive industry. It mainly requires handling or controlling the flow at the front and rear of the vehicles. The objective of this study is to minimize the aerodynamic coefficients of a passenger vehicle while varying the diffuser angle of the geometric design. Many reasons that influence drag and lift coefficient, such as flow separation, vortex, the effect of pressure coefficient, detailed velocity profile and pressure distribution plots around the vehicle body, are presented in this article. A prototype car is first prepared using Solid Works software, and then imported into ANSYS Fluent to allow a CFD digital study to evaluate its aerodynamic coefficients. The resolution of the Navier-Stockes equations is performed by the RANS numerical method with the k-ε closure model, and an unstructured fine mesh. By varying the angles of the rear diffusion angle, it can be observed that the rear diffuser angle 15° give the minimum drag coefficient CD.
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Belhadj, K., Helali, A., Ben Guedria, N., Bouraoui, C. (2022). Optimization of Diffuser Angle to Reduce the Drag of a Light Car. In: Bouraoui, T., et al. Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics II. CoTuMe 2021. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86446-0_56
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