Effect of Trunk Height and Approaching Air Velocity of Notchback Road Vehicles on the Pressure Distribution of the Car Surface

3-D numerical studies are performed to investigate the effect of the trunk height and approaching air velocities on the pressure distribution of notchback road vehicle. For this purpose, the models of test vehicle with four different trunk heights are introduced and PHOENICS, a commercial CFD code, is used to simulate the flow phenomena and to estimate the values of pressure coefficients along the surface of vehicle. The standard k-$\xi$ model is adopted for the simulation of turbulence. The numerical results say that the height variation of trunk makes almost no influence on the distribution of the value of pressure coefficient along upper surface but makes very strong effects on the rear surface. That is, the value of pressure coefficient becomes smaller as the height is increased along the rear surface and the bottom surface. Approaching air velocity make no differences on pressure coefficients. Through the analysis of pressure coefficient on the vehicle surfaces one tried to assess aerodynamic drag and lift of vehicle. The pressure distribution on the rear surface affected more on drag and lift than pressure distribution on the front surface of the vehicle does. The increase of trunk height makes positive effects on the lift decrease but negative effects on drag reduction.

Notchback자동차의 트렁크 높이와 공기속도가 차체 표면의 압력변화에 미치는 영향