Effects of rear spoilers on ground vehicle aerodynamic drag
International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow
ISSN: 0961-5539
Article publication date: 1 April 2014
Issue publication date: 1 April 2014
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the aerodynamic effects of rear spoiler geometry on a sports car. Today, due to economical, safety and even environmental concerns, vehicle aerodynamics play a much more significant role in design considerations and rear spoilers play a major role in this area.
Design/methodology/approach
A 2-D vehicle geometry of a race car is created and solved using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver FLUENT version 6.3. The aerodynamic effects are analyzed under various vehicle speeds with and without a rear spoiler. The main results are compared to a wind tunnel experiment conducted with 1/18 replica of a Nascar.
Findings
By the CFD analysis, the drag coefficient without the spoiler is calculated to be 0.31. When the spoiler is added to the geometry, the drag coefficient increases to 0.36. The computational results with the spoiler are compared with the experimental data, and a good agreement is obtained within a 5.8 percent error band. The uncertainty associated with the experimental results of the drag coefficient is calculated to be 6.1 percent for the wind tunnel testing. The sources of discrepancies between the experimental and numerical results are identified and potential improvements on the model and experiments are provided in the paper. Furthermore, in the CFD model, it is found that the addition of the spoiler caused a decrease in the lift coefficient from 0.26 to 0.05.
Originality/value
This paper examines the effects of rear spoiler geometry on vehicle aerodynamic drag by comparing the CFD analysis with wind tunnel experimentation and conducting an uncertainty analysis to assess the reliability of the obtained results.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr Akif Ezan for all his help and support with modeling the vehicle geometry and UOIT Engineering Lab Technician Qi Shi for helping them with the experiments.
Citation
Sadettin Hamut, H., El-Emam, R.S., Aydin, M. and Dincer, I. (2014), "Effects of rear spoilers on ground vehicle aerodynamic drag", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 627-642. https://doi.org/10.1108/HFF-03-2012-0068
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited