1 1.

CFD is an abbreviation of computational fluid dynamics, this is the prediction and analysis of the behaviour of fluid motion passing objects by numerical methods rather than model experiments. The package that is used by Staffordshire University is CHAM pheonics. This package uses the Navier-stokes equations to solve how the movement of the fluid, pressure temperature and density are all related. There are three stages that this package works in. the first stage is setting up the domain. This is where you define the velocities and density of the fluid. You also set up the grid, this grid divides the domain up and in each square of the grid the package solves the Navier-stokes equation. You can set the number of interations; interations are the number of times the equations are solved, the more interations you set the more reliable the result will be. The next stage is the solver stage, this is where CHAM pheonics solves the equations and the past stage is the post processor stage and this is where it gives a visual representation of what is happening to the flow of the fluid. CFD can be used in many different ways. For example the ACUSIM software is used in many different applications, from automotive design and aerofoils to, corrugated pipe modelling and the design of blood handling devices. To do all of these calculations it uses the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. The difference between CHAM pheonics and ACUSIM is that ACUSIM doesnt use the grid system that CHAM pheonics offers; instead ACUSIM uses Galerkin/Least-Squares. This is s a higher-order accurate, yet stable formulation that uses equal order nodal interpolation for all variables, including pressure according to ACUSIM. Another type of CFD package is the open FOAM. This package is similar in the way CHAM pheonics in that it uses pre and post processors. To start work on the solver its uses simple laplace e.g. thermal diffusion in a solid then solves potential flow which are the bases for the Navier Stokes equations. However the difference between the two is that open FOAM can calculate more multiphase flow calculations for example gas bubbles in a liquid and mixing of incompressible fluids. Both CHAM pheonics and open FOAM can model combustion, this can used to model the flow of fuel in both petrol and diesel four stroke combustion engines. It can also be used to run a solver for fires and turbulan diffusion flames. They can also be used for combustions with chemical reactions and combustion with chemical reactions using density based thermodynamics package. However the ACUSIM package does not use these solvers. Another CFD package is TYCHO, this is a multi-dimensional, compressible hydrodynamics code. This is a Lagrangian remap version of the Piecewise Parabolic Method developed by Paul Woodward and Phil Colella (1984). What this offers you is gas interaction with obstacles, heat diffusion and thermal exchange. It also has gravity as a constant background field. This is different to the others because they have the option to turn gravity off and change how strong the effects of gravity are. TYCHO and ACUSIM share the same feature in that they have the option to change the boundary conditions. None of the other CFD packages give this option. Another CFD company is Zeus numerix who produce FlowZ. They describe the package as an advanced CFD solver. This is because it offers six different numerical schemes. HLLC, Roe,

2 Vanleer, StegarWarming, AUSM, AUSMPW. This gives the option to compare results obtained. This makes results more reliable and accurate and this is the only CFD package looked at with this feature. Some CFD packages integrate CAD modelling into the program, this means that you can design, model and analyse the model. This makes cuts down production time because you dont have to keep importing the model over from the modelling software to the analysis software which can be time consuming. You can make all the changes in the software so you dont have to keep consistently saving and importing the model when changes have been made. An example of a CFD package that does this is NUMECA. NUMECA is similar to CHAM pheonics in that it uses the grid generation to do the calculations, however there are some CFD packages that generate the optimal grid automatically, an example of this is Design Builder. They use the geometry from the model and the boundary conditions to promote optimal solution convergence. Another difference between Design Builder and the others is that it uses a different algorithm, it uses the SIMPLER algorithm, and this means Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure-Linked Equations. This allows the Navier stokes equations to be coupled with an interactive procedure. To conclude there are many different types of CFD packages all over the world and all offering a range of different features. CFD is very useful is the designing process, it can improve reliability, economy and improve the working life of different parts. This is why it has become such a large part of engineering. It also cuts cost in the designing because you dont have to pay for a wind tunnel, and the cost of building a model to test in a wind tunnel also a large amount of packages are free to download.

2. To do a simulation in CHAM pheonics first you have to set up the domain that is doing to be used. The domain for this simulation needs to be large enough for the car to fit it and have space at the rear of the car to see if there are any changes to air as it passes the car. To set up the domain you need to go through the menus and to geometry. Figure 1 shows the menu that will come up. Here you can change the domain size and number of cells in the grid. The domain size is 20m x 5m x5m and the number of cells is 20 x 50 x 20. The cells are how the grid is divided up and how many cells there are equals how many calculations the programme will do of the Navier-stokes equations in the grid. Then the number of interations is how many
Figure 1-Geometry

calculations it will do in one cell. This can be found in the numerics section of the main menu. The number of interations for these simulation runs is 500. The next step in the main menu is to set the NAMGRD setting, this is found in the GROUND menu and the box next to NAMGRD, f1

3 needs to be keyed in. what this does is give the drag, side and lift coefficients after the equations have be solved in solver. Figure 3 shows this. After this has been done the next stage is to start bringing in the objects that will be involved in the testing. The first one is the inlet, this is where the air comes into the domain. To set the size of the inlet there is a size tab in the object options box. The next step is to set the velocity of the air flow, this is in the attributes section and is measured in m/s. for the tests the speeds will be 13.41m/s, 22.53m/s and 31.29. This is because these are the speed limits in the city, urban and the motorway.

Figure 2-numerics

Figure 3

The next stages are to place the outlet and the floor in. they are done in a similar way to the inlet, however in the place tag you can choose where to place them so the outlet will be on the opposite side of the inlet and the floor will be placed on the bottom of the domain. After these are in place the next stage is to bring in the car that is going to be tested. The car that will be tested is the Audi A4. To do this, in the object options menu there is a section where you can bring in CAD files and by using the rotation options and the size options you can get it in the right place and the correct size for the simulation, this is what happened when the Audi was imported. After the Audi is in place the solver stage can begin. His is where the software does the calculations for the air flow. Figure 4 shoes where the solver can be found in the software. Once the solver is running the image in figure 5 will show up. This shows the solver monitoring the progress of the solver when it is solving the Navier Stokes equations. Another box that appears up after the solver has completed the equations, this is the box that gives the details of life side and drag coefficients. Figure 6 shows this. After the solver has been completed, the post processing stage can begin. In this section there is a visual representation of the flow of fluid. From the results of pressure and velocity you can see how the air is flowing and how fast it is traveling. And you can set up stream lines to give a visual representation of what is happening.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

4 The first test that I did was at 30mph (13.41m/s) the results are as follows. From the results we can see the areas of high pressure on the car. This is at the front of the car, this is because this part of the car to hit the air and is forcing it to rise above the car which gives the low pressure on the roof of the car because of the angle of the windscreen. This low pressure creates and area of faster moving air because of pressure gradient created. There is also an area of low velocity at the rear of the car, this is because the air is being forced away from the car as it travels through the air, this leaves an area that cannot be affected by the velocity of the air flow.

Figure 7-pressure at 13.41m/s

Figure 8-velocity at 13.41m/s

The next test that was simulated is with the air velocity at 50mph (22.53m/s). Even though the velocity of the air flow has been increased there is not much change to the flow of air with regards to pressure. At the front of the car there is an increase in pressure because the air is flowing faster therefore more air is hitting the front of the car creating higher pressure. There is also not a lot of change in the velocity, the speeds are higher however there is no change to the flow of the air.

Figure 9- pressure at 22.53m/s

Figure 10- velocity at 22.53

The final speed that is simulated is 70mph (31.29m/s). The results are as follows: From figures 11 and 12 we can see in more detail how the pressure and velocity changes as the air flows over the car. There is a greater amount of air flowing at a slower speed at the front of the car as more air is being forced over the car. This increase in velocity increases the pressure at the front because there is more air is being forced to flow away from the car.

Figure 11- pressure at 31.29m/s

Figure 12- velocity at 31.29m/s

There isnt much visual change in velocity and pressure because the car is not moving at and angle therefore the flow of air will be taking the same course, therefore another way to visualise the changes of pressure is in graphs. From figure 13 we can see that there isnt a large amount of change to the average pressure, there is just 0.6082 difference between 13.41m/s and 31.29m/s. the pressure is negative because it is relative to the pressure in the atmosphere. From the results we can see that the high the velocity the lower the pressure around the car will reach. This is because the faster the air is flowing the more drag there will be, and it is this low pressure that is the drag effect.
Figure 13- average pressure

6 3. Pressure coefficient means the ratio of pressure forces to the internal forces. The equation to work out pressure coefficients is :

The pressures that needed to be recorded needed to be spread equally along the car above it and below it, to gain reliable data there are 5 points where the pressure will be recorded from. The results for 30mph are: 30mph Above car 45.70772 -5.999194 -29.66726 -25.59049 -6.536892

Below car 25.90243 -46.22072 -3.021159 -26.82663 -11.42372

When this is put into the equation and put into a graph it looks like this:

Figure 14- pressure coefficients for 30mph

From figure 14 we can see that the pressure coefficient with the air flowing over the car is a steady arc where as there are peaks and troughs is the results, this could be because the wheels are creating areas of low pressure which would affect the pressure coefficient.

Figure 15-pressure coefficients for 50mph

7 When we compare figure 14 and 15 the lines and the coefficients above and below the car are very similar, and it is the same results for the simulation at 70mph as shown in figure 16.

Figure 16- pressure coefficients for 70mph

The results for the pressure coefficients vary slightly, however when plotted on a graph they all take the same form. This is because pressure coefficients are relative to the pressure in the domain and as the car has not moved from its original placement. Therefore from the graphs we can see that the higher amounts of pressure are found at the front of the car, and as the air flows over the car the pressure is decreasing , however as the air starts to rear the rear end of the car the pressure increases slightly. The pressure that is being recorded below the car has two peaks of a high pressure coefficient. This means that the pressure at those two points were lower. The reason for this is the way the wheels cut through the air; they leave an area of low pressure behind them. The reason why the first peak is 0.033 larger than the second is because these are the front wheels and they are hitting the air first, therefore by the time the air has reached the rear wheels the pressure is not as high as it was when it first hit the front wheels this means that they have a lower pressure difference because the air pressure is already lower. Figure 17 shows the car at a close up view making clearer to see the pressure behind the wheels. It is very clear that the pressure behind the front wheels is lower than that behind the rear wheels.

Figure 17

To conclude, the higher the velocity of air passing over the car, the higher the pressure will be at the front of the car and the lower the pressure will be at the rear of the car. We can also see that changing the velocity will not affect the pressure coefficient because the cars position is not moving and the pressure coefficient is relative to the pressure in the domain. The pressure coefficients below a car are not as laminar as you would expect, it is widely affected by the wheels creating areas of low pressure.

8 References ACUSIM Software Applications. 2013. ACUSIM Software Applications. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.acusim.com/html/applications.html. [Accessed 9 April 2013]. Standard Solvers. 2013. Standard Solvers. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.openfoam.com/features/standard-solvers.php#incompressibleFlowSolvers. [Accessed 10 April 2013]. ACUSIM Software AcuSolve. 2013. ACUSIM Software AcuSolve. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.acusim.com/html/acusolve.html?phpMyAdmin=FRtr5SghpEUhhg%2CH2nBQB3F8g0f . [Accessed 10 April 2013]. Welcome to TYCHO - TYrolian Computational HydrOdynamics. 2013.Welcome to TYCHO - TYrolian Computational HydrOdynamics. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.tycho-cfd.at/. [Accessed 11 April 2013]. Zeus Numerix - FlowZ - Pressure and Density based Solver. 2013. Zeus Numerix - FlowZ - Pressure and Density based Solver. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.zeusnumerix.com/products/cfd/flowz/#pressure_based. [Accessed 11 April 2013]. Numeca International: Products. 2013. Numeca International: Products. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.numeca.be/index.php?id=16. [Accessed 11 April 2013]. Modelling Capabilities . 2013. Modelling Capabilities . [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.cham.co.uk/products/modellingcapabilities.php. [Accessed 10 April 2013].