3rd Automotive CFD Prediction Workshop — Barcelona 2022

Summary

The 3rd Automotive CFD Prediction Workshop was held on 22–23 September 2022 in a hybrid format, virtually and in Barcelona, Spain. Two test cases were studied: the Windsor body and the DrivAer Notchback (detailed underbody with no rolling road or rotating wheels), as well as an additional geometry containing a front deflector to assess the ability to predict geometry deltas, absolute values and flow fields correctly. 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.

Test cases

Case 1

Case 1 is the Windsor Squareback body at 2.5 degrees yaw. In comparison with the second workshop, the test case was simplified to use only the original no-wheels model and meshes with a high y+ and wall-function-type boundary condition. The problem is at a Reynolds number of 3 million based on vehicle length and within a wind-tunnel-like domain. In addition to force, moment and surface-pressure data, non-intrusive PIV measurements are available in the wake. The baseline grid is similar to the eddy-resolving grid from the second workshop and contains 37 million cells. The alternate grids halve and double the core cell size to give 7-million- and 197-million-cell grids. The grid type follows the second workshop, using the trimmer mesh and prism-layer approach from Simcenter STAR-CCM+. Download the AutoCFD3 Case 1 test description, submission guidelines and example data-submission folder. Grids are available in a variety of formats below.

Case 2

Case 2 is the notchback version of the DrivAer. In addition to the base DrivAer variant (Case 2a), which was analysed in the 2nd Automotive CFD Prediction Workshop, a variant featuring a front-wheel air deflector (Case 2b) was proposed for the 3rd workshop. The AutoCFD3 Case 2 description and, for the base variant, SAE Technical Paper 2021-01-0958 by Hupertz et al. provide further information. For both DrivAer variants, the workshop focused on a closed-cooling 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. The mesh of the base variant (Case 2a) is identical to the “Case 2 – Wall-Function Grid” used in the 2nd workshop. The Case 2b mesh is identical to the Case 2a mesh except for the front-wheel air-deflector region. Download the AutoCFD3 DrivAer result template and flow-field mapping files in ANSA and Nastran formats.

Documents

Grids

Case 1

Case 2

Agenda

Download the final AutoCFD3 workshop agenda.

Results dashboard

Explore the AutoCFD3 interactive results dashboard.

Presentations

Organisers

• Oriol Lehmkuhl (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) - Local Organiser
• Herbert Owen (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) - Local Organiser
• Gary Page (Loughborough University)
• Burkhard Hupertz (Ford)
• Astrid Walle (Neural Concept)
• Neil Ashton (Amazon Web Services / University of Oxford)
• Charles Mockett (Upstream CFD)
• 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)