Experimental Investigation of the Flow Field of a Notchback and Estate Back Full-Scale DrivAer Model with Ground Simulation
摘要
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods are becoming increasingly important in the modern automotive design process, where the main objective is to predict the effect of geometry changes on drag and lift. To ensure the accuracy of the results, the methods and setups must be validated, using reliable experimental data from different geometries under identical boundary conditions. The DrivAer model allows the effects of these different geometric modifications to be analyzed with reduced complexity compared to a production car. Two geometry variants, the notchback and the estate back, were investigated in a full-scale wind tunnel including ground simulation. As the flow field of the notchback model has proven to be particularly difficult to reproduce in CFD, the experimental data presented focuses on this area. Additional investigations with the estate rear end configuration show the presence of a pronounced upwash from the underbody, resulting in an upward distortion of the wake of the vehicle. A strong dependence of the rear lift and drag on the diffuser angle is observed. For the present study, validation data were collected using different rakes, equipped with pitot-probes mounted directly on the model and on the traverse system of the wind tunnel.