Automotive Aerodynamic Development Using CFD

Simulating the aerodynamic flow around a fundamental body using Ansys Fluent

Created byDominic Flynn

Last updated 1/2025

English

What you'll learn

Understand basic bluff-body aerodynamic flows.
Use CFD to simulate aerodynamic flow around a simple body.
Perform post-processing and analysis of the flow around a simple body.
Perform an aerodynamic optimisation of a simple representative automotive body.
Lean basic meshing strategies for aerodynamics simulations

Course content

1 section • 10 lectures • 2h 12m total length

Introduction3:58
This is an introduction to the course, who I am and what we will be covering.
The Aerodynamics of Reference Bodies9:38
A discussion of bluff body aerodynamics concepts, a review of available reference bodies and their benefits and uses.
Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics for Aerodynamic Analysis17:54
Creating Geometry17:07
Meshing25:04
Setting Boundary Conditions and Numerical Methods11:07
Solution Discussion2:25
Post-Processing, Analysis and Force Coefficients25:28
Project: Optimisation12:51
Optimisation Project: Data Analysis6:38

Requirements

Basic understanding of fluid mechanics concepts and an interest in automtive aerodynamics.

Description

Automotive aerodynamics is important because over 50% of energy used by a car over 80km/h is from aerodynamic drag . Being capable of reducing this is highly beneficial to manufacturers and the mechanisms driving this are of curiosity to academics and industry professionals alike.

In this course you will learn basic automotive aerodynamics and how to simulate aerodynamic flows around a representative automotive body using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). We will use the package Fluent within the Ansys Workbench toolbox to obtain the flow field around the body and perform some post-processing and analysis on the results.

The course will primarily focus on the Windsor body representative automotive body. This was chosen over more complex shapes to reduce the computational effort required while ensuring sound principles of simulation and analysis are developed.

The course will culminate in an optimisation study of the Windsor body using parametric analysis within Ansys Workbench.

This course is aimed at Undergraduate or Postgraduate students who wish to develop their understanding of automotive aerodynamics, CFD and post-processing techniques.

Learning Outcomes

Understand basic bluff-body aerodynamic flows.
Use CFD to simulate aerodynamic flow around a simple body.
Perform post-processing and analysis of the flow around a simple body.
Perform an aerodynamic optimisation of a simple representative automotive body.

Who this course is for:

Students or early-career professionals who want to develop their computational fluid dynamics knowledge for automotive aerodynamic analysis.