CFD ANALYSIS OF DIFFUSER IN A CAR FOR DOWNFORCE GENERATION

Abstract

Many accidents take place on our highways on a daily basis where the driver loses control of his/her vehicle. Highways being the arteries of a nation are used widely by the people to travel and at faster speeds causing many such accidents. While drag reduction is essential on its own, downforce generation plays a pivotal role in improving handling characteristics of the given vehicle. The objective of this paper is to understand how a diffuser works and what advantages it may give to any given vehicle pertaining to its role in altering the drag and lift characteristics of the said vehicle. Computational Fluid Dynamics technique was utilized to determine optimum diffuser angle for maximum downforce that it can create. Ansys 14.0 Fluent was utilized to analyze the drag and lift acting on the vehicle at different diffuser angles at different vehicle speeds.