ECCOMAS 2024

Study on the Effect of the Upcoming Turbulent Boundary Layer on Automotive Test Case

  • O'Sullivan, Andrew (Cadence Design Systems, Inc.)
  • Mangani, Luca (Cadence Design Systems, Inc.)
  • Ferrer, Esteban (UPM)

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In the present study, we plan to compare different strategies to simulate the upcoming turbulent boundary layer for LES codes on automotive test cases and quantify the impact. The test case is the yawed Windsor Body which is one of the two automotive benchmarks used for AutoCFD 3 and AutoCFD4 workshop [1] and which has extensive experimental and previous CFD results to compare against. The upcoming turbulent boundary layer is of similar size as the gap between the bottom of the Windsor Body and the floor, making it thus a test case of interest to verify the sensitivity to the upcoming boundary layer. For the study, we will use a low mach, Finite Volume Wall Modeled Large Eddy Simulation solver together with the turbulence generator strategies. We plan to run the test case not only at the operating condition of the AutoCFD workshop but verify the sensitivity to the upcoming boundary layer thickness and the inlet turbulence intensity. We will analyse the effect on : the mean forces (drag and side force), the variance of the forces, frequencies of the force oscillations, wake structures and Cp profiles. The goal is to understand which metrics are more sensitive to the CFD inlet settings such that this can be applied to other automotive test cases where the operating conditions (upcoming boundary layer) are either unknown or incomplete; and thus determine whether the upcoming boundary layer can explain the differences with experimental results on other test cases.