The field of road vehicle aerodynamics has advanced towards its limits in designing optimal body shapes. The possible lowest drag and highest down-force have been approached. The only open question seems to be the effect of the rotating wheels facing the flow, or partially covered by the car body. The contribution of wheels to the total aerodynamic drag of a modern car is about 30 %. The flow field past wheels influences the cooling of brakes, the underbody flow, the mud deposition, the drag and lift forces acting on the car body. Air can be regarded as incompressible but a sophisticated way of handling turbulence is strongly needed because of the presence of shear layers, boundary layer separations and adverse pressure gradients. Isolated road vehicle wheels were already investigated deeply, but less is known about rotating wheels in wheelhouses. The flow field past a model is calculated and described in this article.
Investigation of flow field past rotating wheels of cars
Untersuchung des Strömungsfeldes hinter rotierenden Fahrzeugrädern
2003
7 Seiten, 8 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 7 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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