The traditional side mirrors on automobile could create substantial part of drag in the total car aerodynamic design consideration. On some concept cars, digital side mirrors have been installed which are aiming to reduce the total drag, thus the optimization study of digital side mirrors configuration becomes an important task. In this study the benchmark DrivAer fastback model is employed for optimization work of digital side mirrors via computation fluid dynamics software, and simulated with realistic moving ground and rotating wheel conditions. In order to validate the lift and drag coefficients with existing experimental data, the wheel rotation is implemented by three different kinds of rotating methods: Moving Wall, Multiple Reference Frame and Sliding Mesh, while the Sliding Mesh method provides the most accurate results. For optimization work, a concept of digital side mirror configuration is created, and the objective is aiming the best drag reduction via various installation positions by using the surrogate method which is based on Kriging model. The results show for the best achieved side mirror location, it is observed that a positive effect of drag reduction from increasing the intensity of some specific vortices, and its wake region can be weaker than the original configuration.
關聯:
SAE International Journal of Passenger Cars—Mechanical Systems 14(1)
