2nd Automotive CFD Prediction Workshop — Berlin 2021

Summary

The 2nd Automotive CFD Prediction Workshop was held on 26–27 August 2021 in a hybrid format, virtually and in Berlin, Germany. It was preceded by the Fourth International Conference in Numerical and Experimental Aerodynamics of Road Vehicles and Trains (AEROVEHICLES 4), and both the conference and workshop were held during the same week. Two test cases were studied: the Windsor body and the DrivAer Notchback (detailed underbody with no rolling road or rotating wheels). Meshes were created for all cases in major grid formats, including OpenFOAM, STAR-CCM+, Fluent and CGNS, in addition to geometry and surface meshes. Participants who submitted results were allocated a 15-minute presentation slot; those who wished to present relevant material, such as the wind-tunnel campaign of the DrivAer model, without computing the test cases were also able to speak.

Test cases

Case 1

Case 1 is the Windsor Body, which is a simplified vehicle-like shape in wind-tunnel conditions intended to capture important flow-field structures without the complex geometrical detail found in the second DrivAer case. The Windsor model, developed by Steve Windsor of Jaguar Land Rover, was modified to include a version with wheels. Further details are given in Pavia’s doctoral thesis and the PhD thesis of Varney. These two cases had extensive measurements taken at the Loughborough University wind tunnel at a Reynolds number of approximately 3 million (based on vehicle length). The full Windsor Body experimental aerodynamic dataset is available from Loughborough University’s research repository.

Two CAD definitions were provided for the with-wheels (1A) and without-wheels (1B) geometries. For each case, four standard meshes were provided in a range of grid formats: low-Re wall-resolved RANS (WRRANS), wall-modelled RANS (WMRANS), low-Re wall-resolved Eddy Resolving (WRER) and wall-modelled Eddy Resolving (WMER). For the WRER case, the high aspect ratio near the wall makes this suitable for DES and hybrid RANS-LES approaches, and it is not recommended for classic eddy-resolving LES. The post-processing instructions and example submission files are retained below.

Case 2

Case 2 is the notchback version of the open-cooling DrivAer. A detailed description of the AutoCFD2 DrivAer test case (version 6, 6 July 2021) and SAE Technical Paper 2021-01-0958 by Hupertz et al. provide further information. The workshop focused on a closed-cooling DrivAer configuration with static wheels and a static floor. A comprehensive set of experimental data from the Pininfarina Wind Tunnel (courtesy of Ford), including aerodynamic forces, surface pressure, velocity profiles and 2D flow-field measurements, was available for correlation with the CFD analyses presented at the workshop. The meshes retained below were created using ANSA by BETA-CAE Systems.

Documents

Grids

Case 1a

Case 2

Agenda

Download the final AutoCFD2 workshop agenda.

Presentations

Organisers

• Charles Mockett (Upstream CFD) - Local Organiser
• Gary Page (Loughborough University)
• Neil Ashton (Amazon Web Services / University of Oxford)
• Burkhard Hupertz (Ford)
• Lian Duan (Ohio State University)
• Timo Kuthada (FKFS)
• Simone Sebben (Chalmers University)
• Charles Ribes (Stellantis)
• Iraj Mortazavi (CNAM)
• Vangelis Skaperdas (BETA-CAE Systems)
• Martin Passmore (Loughborough University)
• Adrian Gaylard (Jaguar Land Rover)
• Fabian Rösler (Audi)
• Marco Kiewat (Audi)
• Astrid Walle (CFD Solutions)