Effect of blowing flow control and front geometry towards the reduction of aerodynamic drag on vehicle models

Abstract

This paper presents analyses of the effect of blowing flow control and variations on front geometry towards the reduction of aerodynamic drag on vehicle models. Blowing flow control is an alternative measure in modifying the onset of flow separation in the boundary layer on the surface of the vehicle. The modification is expected to reduce the dominating influence of the separation area on the total drag. Conducted in computational and experimental approaches, the research investigated the effect of frontal slant angle variations (θ) of 25°, 30° and 35° towards the reduction of aerodynamic drag on vehicle models on the application of blowing flow control with upstream and blowing speed of 16.7 m/s and 0.5 m/s, respectively. Load cells were used in the experimental method to validate the reduction of aerodynamic drag obtained from computational method. It is indicated that the effects of blowing flow control and variations on front geometry are significant in the increasing on pressure coefficients and the reduction of aerodynamic drag on vehicle models. The largest increase on pressure coefficients of 38.93% is indicated on the vehicle model with θ=35°, while the largest reduction of aerodynamic drag occurred on the same model with the values of 14.81 and 12.54 for computational and experimental methods, respectively.

Keywords

• active flow control
• aerodynamic drag reduction
• blowing
• front geometry
• vehicle model