Friday, July 25, 2025 - 11:30
Automotive Engineering
Graduate Seminar
NOTICE OF SEMINAR PRESENTATION
CANDIDATE: Phillippe Pession
DEGREE SOUGHT: MASc
DATE: 7/25/2025
TIME: 11:30am
PLACE: Room 1102 CEI
TITLE: Improving Models and Simulations for Automotive Drag Predictions
Abstract
CFD simulations for automotive bluff bodies often rely on simplified models for both the vehicle and the domain. Current models maintains simplified shape but fail in capturing the full flow behaviour over a real vehicle. A model presented in the literature has been taken and modified in order to improve its accuracy and reduce the differences with real life facilities. This model features an automatic approach for the generation of the vehicle and wind tunnel models as well as an automatic process for the meshing of the domain. Changes made to this model includes the modification of numerical schemes, in order to account for the poor quality of the grid and introduce a moving ground system able to replicate the real system present in the wind tunnel of Stellantis US. Another key aspect for the prediction of drag coefficient for automotive bluff bodies is that the same vehicle in different facilities often leads to different drag coefficients. A parametric setup based on the improved models is carried out and a correction method is proposed by combining new sampling points with the results obtained previously in the literature. This new combined correction shows promising results while featuring a significantly lower amount of samples, reducing the standard deviation by 39% compared to the current state of art when applied to a small dataset of 10 experimental points (5 for each vehicle in 2 different wind tunnels).(519)253-3000