Notchback sedan aerodynamics predictions with different turbulence modelling and ground effects
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Understanding and control of turbulence is critical for vehicle design. While substantial efforts have been devoted to vehicle aerodynamics [1-3], the complexity of actual vehicle operating conditions often far exceeds the scenarios addressed in existing literature. In particular, few fluid mechanics studies have considered the coupled aerodynamic effects induced by wheel rotation and ground motion—two indispensable boundary conditions for vehicles in motion. To fill this gap, this work conducts a combined investigation of wind tunnel experiments and high-fidelity numerical simulations on the turbulent flow past a geometrically scaled 1:10 canonical notchback sedan model at a Reynolds number Re=1.02×105. Three configurational parametrizations are deployed to explore the coupled effects of ground and wheel motion: stationary ground-stationary wheels (SGSW), moving ground-stationary wheels (MGSW), and moving ground-rotating wheels (MGRW). Meanwhile, the predictive capabilities of three numerical approaches, namely Large Eddy Simulation (LES), Improved Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (IDDES), and Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS), are systematically compared, with a specific focus on flow characteristics around rotating wheels. Numerical and experimental results demonstrate that wheel rotation and ground motion exert significant and coupled impacts on sedan aerodynamics: the MGRW configuration yields the lowest drag and lift coefficients compared to the MGSW and SGSW cases. Further analyses of pressure distributions, vorticity fields, and turbulent kinetic energy elucidate the intricate mechanistic interplay between wheel-induced vortices and ground-induced boundary layer modifications. With respect to numerical method performance, LES outperforms IDDES and URANS in capturing dynamic flow information, especially in the near-wall region around the wheels. In contrast, IDDES and URANS, even with coarser meshes, can reproduce reasonable mean flow fields but fail to accurately resolve near-wall coherent wake structures; notably, IDDES is found to be unsuitable for simulating the flow field in the wheel-surrounding region. This study provides novel insights into the aerodynamic characteristics of notchback vehicles under realistic operating conditions and offers a clear reference for the selection of appropriate numerical simulation methods for vehicle aerodynamics research involving rotating wheels and moving ground effects.
