Citation

Favre T, Näfver JJ, Jerrelind J, Trigell AS, Efraimsson G. Int. J. Veh. Des. 2016; 72(4): 332-353.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Inderscience Publishers)

DOI

10.1504/IJVD.2016.082384

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In this paper, aerodynamic loads of a generic car model obtained from advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are coupled to a vehicle dynamics model to enable the assessment of the on-road response. The influence of four rear configurations is studied. The different configurations yield large differences in yaw moments and side forces, which in turn result in considerable discrepancies in lateral displacements as well as yaw rates. From the simulations, it is seen that through balancing the location of the centre of pressure, the stiffness of the suspension bushings and the cornering stiffness of the tyres, it is possible to obtain stable vehicles in strong crosswind conditions for all four rear designs. The results show that monitoring the location of the aerodynamic centre of pressure with respect to the centre of gravity and the neutral steer point is essential for the possibility of designing stable vehicles in transient crosswind.


Keywords: unsteady crosswinds; crosswind aerodynamics; wind gust models; DES; detached eddy simulation; vehicle dynamics; vehicle modelling; wind gusts; dynamic modelling; computational fluid dynamics; CFD; vehicle rear configurations; yaw moments; side forces; lateral displacements; yaw rates; suspension bushing stiffness; suspension bushings; tyres; tyre cornering stiffness; vehicle rear design; aerodynamic centre of pressure; centre of gravity; neutral steer point; vehicle design.

Language: en