Numerical Analysis of the Influence of Particular Parts of the High Efficient Electric Vehicle on the Aerodynamic Forces

Abstract

The work presents a three-dimensional modeling of air flow around the research object. The purpose of this work is to perform numerical calculations to identify the magnitude of the aerodynamic drag force generated on individual elements of a high energy efficiency vehicle body. Specially designed for the Shell Eco-marathon competition, this vehicle needs to show the lowest possible fuel consumption while maintaining the prescribed speed. Minimizing the drag force at an early designing stage plays an important role here. The calculations were performed using the ANSYS Fluent calculation solver. The result of the conducted research is a description of the velocity and pressure distributions around the tested vehicle as well as an identification of the drag force on the external surfaces of the components and a description of the relationship between them. The work also discusses the dependence of the drag force as a function of speed in the range from 0 to 12 m/s. The influence of the ground on the drag force in the case when the object, as in a wind tunnel, was immobilized in relation to the walls at the flowing medium was investigated. Based on the calculations performed, no impact of the ground on the generated drag force magnitude was found.

Keywords

• aerodynamics
• computational fluid dynamics
• drag force
• electric vehicle
• fluid mechanics