Active Flow Control by Suction on Vehicle Models with Variations on Front Geometry

Abstract

Current development of modern vehicles requires rigorous aerodynamic study due to the complexity of the flow field around a car which is influenced by geometric design of vehicles. That makes research on the aerodynamic drag force on vehicles very important. This study aimed to analyze the effect of active flow control by suction and variations on front geometry towards the reduction of aerodynamic drag as well as pressure coefficients on vehicle models. The research was conducted in computational and experimental approaches. Frontal slant angle variations (() of 25(, 30( and 35( were applied in the study. Computational approach used k-epsilon standard turbulence model. Upstream and suction velocity values used were16.7 m/sand 0.5 m/s, respectively. Load cells were used in the experimental approach to validate the reduction of aerodynamic drag obtained from computational approach. Results indicate that active flow control by suction and variations on front geometry give significant impact to the increasing on pressure coefficients and the reduction of aerodynamic drag on vehicle models. While the largest increasing on pressure coefficients occurred on the vehicle model with θ=35( at 26.50%, the largest reduction of aerodynamic drag occurred on the same model with the value of 14.74 for computational approach and 13.57 for experimental approach, while the reductions of aerodynamic drag coefficients of the two approaches differ about 1.17%.