A comparison of RANS-based turbulence modeling and PIV experiments for flow over a simplified road vehicle

Abstract

The aerodynamic forces on road vehicles and flow structures around them result from complex interactions between fluid and structure. Ahmed body is a simplified car model created to demonstrate and simplify the flow around real-size ground vehicles. In this study, the flow structure on the wake region of Ahmed body with different slant angles (Θ=15°, 25°, and 35°) was investigated. Experimental studies were conducted in a water channel by Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The freestream velocity was set to 0.2 m/s, and the Reynolds number defined by the characteristic length of the Ahmed body was 4.16×104 for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and PIV experiments. CFD simulations were performed using three different turbulence models: realizable k-ϵ, RNG k-ϵ, and SST k-ω, and the results were compared to experiments. The results are presented with different flow features such as time-averaged velocity vectors and velocity contours, streamline topology, vorticity, and Turbulence Kinetic Energy. The closest results to the experiments were obtained by the SST k-ω turbulence model for all slant angles of the Ahmed body. In addition, the drag coefficient is found to be 0.37 for all slant angles analyzed by SST k-ω turbulence models, which are also close to the results in the literature.