• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.86-96
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• 1998

A numerical study has been carried out of three-dimensional turbulent flows around a MIRA reference vehicle model both with and without wheels in computation. Two convective difference schemes with two k-$\varepsilon$ turbulence models are evaluated for the performance such as drag coefficient, velocity and pressure fields. Pressure coefficients along the surfaces of the model are compared with experimental data. The drag coefficient, the velocity and pressure fields are found to change considerably with the adopted finite difference schemes. Drag forces computed in the various regions of the model indicate that design change decisions should not rely just on the total drag and that local flow structures are important. The results also indicate that the RNG model with the QUICK scheme predicts fairly well the tendency of velocity and pressure fields and gives more reliable drag coefficient rather than the other cases.