Description of flow field in the wheelhouses of cars

RANS and URANS modeling of flow past simplified vehicle bodies with wheelhouses and rotating wheels have been carried out in order to understand the flow phenomena through detailed analyses of flow in the wheelhouses. The vortex skeleton method was used to characterize the flow structure. The second invariant of the velocity gradient tensor (Q) and iso-surfaces of total pressure have been applied for detecting dynamically significant vortical structures. It was found that the flow field in the wheelhouse can be characterized by several large recirculation zones, of which six can be classified as qualitatively independent of the grid, numerical scheme, turbulence model and the shape of the vehicle body. The change of flow field structure was investigated for various wheelhouse geometries, and for closed lower and/or lateral gaps between the wheelhouse and the external flow field. Aerodynamic forces acting on the body, wheelhouse and wheel were determined separately for different configurations.