Final project

Car with pipe cavity

Yussef Rikli Me G0200 Final project

INTRODUCTION
Automobiles are one of the most important human inventions, as they have revolutionized ground transportation for the human race. Since their invention, engineers have been trying to minimize fuel consumption, increase speed, and reduce the carbon emissions of cars; the current project is one of such attempts. The idea is to add a pipe cavity inside the car connecting its front to its rear. Inside the pipe, a turbine would generate electricity from the airflow. The first thought I had was that due to the lost energy because of friction with the turbine, the energy expended to overcome that friction will indivertibly be more than the electrical energy harvested from it. However, this project simply aims to tap into lost potential; by connecting the very high stagnation pressure area at the front of the car -where the car rams the air at high speed-, with the low/negative pressure in the wake of the car after it pushes the air aside and the air is yet to go back and fill the void. Connecting these two areas of such a high difference in potential is like shorting an electric circuit, and so the flow velocity inside that connecting pipe is higher than the velocity outside the car, sometimes with a fraction that nears two. FLUENT package of ANSYS will be used to calculate both the drag penalty (or improvement) of adding the apparatus to a car, as well as the energy harvested from a turbine placed there. If the energy harvested is more than the energy lost (if any), then the project is feasible.

OBJECTIVE
In this project, we will carry on from previous students who modeled a simplified real car and ran some simulations with a simple pipe added. Using the same car model, the design will be advanced by adding a bellmouth to better collect airflow at the entrance, a divergent nozzle at the exit to ease the pressure transition. And to represent the space under the hood more accurately, a simplified engine will also be added. Slight changes in the configuration of the previous elements will be made; all the time driven towards faster flow inside the pipe, less drag, and more accurate representation of a real car.

In short, the objective of this project is to try several geometrical configuration of the cavity, and find the one that produces the most desirable results.

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Standard simulation cycle

The outer geometry of the car has been chosen to be the same as that used by last years group. In that group, David Melecio-Vazquez1 simplified the geometry of a full-scale Ford Taurus 2013, and then simulated it going 60Mph. Kevin D Beteta2 added a hole to Davids car, varied its diameter and mesh then analyzed the results. The other team members are Akimu Garuba3 and Xudong Zhang, whose work does not directly affect this project.

Geometry
In SolidWorks:
The dimensions of Davids car (which he modeled in ANSYS directly) were used to make a replica in Sol idWorks, and can be seen below.

Figure 1: David's car, general dimensions in meters, detailed section in inches.

Later a hole of diameter 0.3m is cut through the car and centered at the center of the car front. The pipe exhaust edge is given a chamfer; cutting 2in from the edge at 85 , the end of the chamfer connecting to the pipe is given a 1in radius fillet (which in retrospective was useless) while the front of the car is hollowed out with the shell tool, with thickness 3in, and variable distance 58in from the centre of the car (symmetry plane), which gives us the bell mouth. Next, the edge of the pipes inlet is given a fillet of radius 5in as well as the corner edges of the top and lower surfaces with the surface having the hole, as can be seen in the figure below.

1 CITY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK, INVELOX, Car Group Analysis by David Melecio-Vazquez: Geometry of Car, Baseline Drag Characteristics, Fall 2012. 2 The City College of New York (CCNY), Fall 2012, ME G0200 Final Report [Analysis of Car with Hollow-Pipe] by Kevin D Beteta. 3 Akimu Garuba modeled flow over a rectangular box, and he reported that the drag increases when he added a hole, that might be caused by his few mesh elements, or maybe incorrect boundary conditions.

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Figure 2: General dimentions of David's car and the bell mouth, in inches. more drawings are in the powerpoint presentation.

In future modifications, the diameter of the pipe is changed to 0.2m . And later on the pipe is lowered down 3in, with no change to other features.

In Fluent Geometry:
Now that the SolidWorks file is complete, it is saved as an IGES file and opened in ANSYS geometry. A box is drawn on the ground plane, of dimensions 60m by 20m, with 20m from the front of the rectangle and center of

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Figure 3: the domain of air around the car after symmetry. With the dimensions (height is 13m).

car. then that box is extruded as frozen to a height of 13m, a Boolean operator is used to subtract the car from the extruded box of air, a symmetry plane is added, the result should look like the figure below.

Finally we add named selections, the inlet will be the front, side and top sides of the box, the ground will be a moving wall, the symmetry plane will be named as such, the pipe and the chamfered and filleted surfaces are selected and named as inlet pipe outlet, the rest of the car surfaces are named rest of car surfaces. A list containing the named selections created can be seen to the right.

Figure 4: list containing named selections

ENGINE BLOCK The engine block is modeled as a box with filleted edges of radius 50mm. It is added to the car in a new assembly, and centered equally between the sides, 50mm from the bottom and 100mm from the surface containing the pipe hole. Saved in IGES format and same steps followed; except in the Boolean operator both the car and the engine block have to be subtracted. Also a separate engine block named selection is created for it.

Figure 5: the simplified engine block.

Figure 6: Engineering drawing detailing the engine block and its placement.

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Notes: If a surface is selected in two named selections, you will not be able to open the mesher and it will tell you so. If you forget or miss any car surfaces in your named selections, you will have a solid-wall extra item in the boundary conditions sections in the setup section that is yet to come. Also in retrospective I shouldve included the top and lower inner surfaces of the bell mouth to the inlet pipe outlet named selection, as they could use a denser mesh distribution as may be noted in results later.

MESH GENERATION
After playing with the mesh sizes and getting a feel for what would feel sufficiently right, the following mesh

refinements were added: a- Default mesh: max face size has been changed to 0.5m and max size to 1m b- Surface sizing:
Figure 7: Left: general mesh details and sizing. Top Middle: sphere of influence refinement details. Top Right: mesh refinement added to the named selection inletpipeoutlet". Bottom Middle: engine block surface refinement details.

applied to the named selection inlet pipe outlet of size 0.02m c- When the engine block was added, it was also given a 0.02m surface refinement. d- Refinement method, sphere of influence: centered about the global coordinate center, of radius 7m and element size 0.1m

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Figure 8: general mesh distribution, in this case with no engine Note, the dark shadowed part is inside the box of air. Figure 9: mesh of 0.2m diameter pipe with engine in place.

The final mesh had approximately 0.63 million nodes and 3.64 million elements, which did not change much for the different geometries.

Setup settings
Enable double precision, enable parallel processing and allow 4 processes (verify if you have 4 cores from your windows task manager or device manager). I disable ANSYS color theme out of aesthetical preference, although the black background for the graphics may not be printer friendly as it consumes more ink. Notes: Using job scheduler would save a lot of time if I learned how to. Worst mesh elements were very bad, with aspect ratios of around 30 and an orthogonal quality of around 0.1, the mesh surfacing/swiping would have been used -since from experience it improves the worst elements-, however because I dont know what it does exactly, and I have a doubt that it changes the mesh elements and misaligns the nodes if used excessively, so I dont use it.

General
View your zones, and check view the solid-wall zone if you have it; which would mean you missed selecting some surfaces in the named selections.

Models
Viscous- Keep at laminar, or change to viscous k-epsilon model with standard values.

Boundary conditions
Rest of car body, inletpipeoutle and engine block: fixed wall. Ground: moving wall, velocity 23.82m/s backwards. Symmetry side: symmetry plane. Front, top and side: velocity inlet, 26.82m/s in the negative x-direction. Back side: pressure outlet.

Reference values
Length is the length of car=5.15m, area is the projected area perpendicular to the inlet wind direction, which is half the area used by David (I used his by mistake in the beginning then fixed it), and is equal to 1.342881 . Velocity is the free stream velocity, which is 60 mph=26.82 m/s. Notes: Subtracting the area of the hole in the bell mouth run was assumed to result in a negligible difference, and so wasnt Page 6 of 10

Figure 10:the projected area report in Fluent.

taken into consideration.(0.0353 is the neglected half cross sectional area of the pipe) Finding the projected area using the Reports section in fluent is unreliable, as it gives different values based on the min feature size, which with the defaults value of 0.6 gives a very erroneous result, only by going down to 0.1 or even 0.01 do the results became accurate enough.

Monitors
Add the cl and cd monitors, optional if you want to write it to file, I did not. select the zones which comprise the whole car body, for me engine block+inletpipeoutlet+rest of car body and wall -solid. The latter exists if I missed any surfaces in my named selections.

Solution methods
Values for Pressure and momentum (Turbulent Kinetic Energy and Turbulent Dissipation Rate in turbulent case); first order or second order, some students recommended using QUICK but I read about it and it doesnt seem like a general option thatll work for any simulation, so I avoided it, using only standard/first order for all values, then switching all to second order upwind.

Calculation routine
1- Run laminar first order, 600-1000 iterations. 2- Switch to turbulent for some 300-600 iterations; it is very plausible that the solution will converge here. 3- Switch to second order values and continue running for 300-600 iterations. Steps 2 and 3 are done in reversed order sometimes, although it is best to leave switching to second order last. 4- Export case, data and solution files. Take a snapshot of the cl and cd, as well as the residuals sometimes. 5- Save 4 PNG pictures (using the ---dropdown menu) in a widescreen resolution (I used 1366x600) of static pressure, total pressure and velocity contours, plus velocity vectors. These four are displayed only on the symmetry plane with the flow going left to right. The contours were with fixed color range for the data, so as to be compared easily (values corresponding to colors will not change). Upon reflection, I would not have just fixed the global range of my first run, but added a margin to both the max and min to accommodate values of the simulations yet to come which may be out of the range of the first simulation run. For me now these off-chart-regions are not colored (black). The setting I used the most for the velocity vector plot was scale of 20 and skipping 0. However, sometimes I changed them. Save case, data and solution, solution files contain only static and total pressure as well as velocity magnitude and angle, in CFD-post compatible format. 6- Change geometry and repeat.

Unnecessary runs:
a- Tried running second order after the solution converged in turbulent first order to see the effect; no significant change in values. Conclusion; if the solution converges there is not much accuracy to be yearned for. b- Ran a simulation with the car without the hole and the bottom blocked by mistake, results were saved anyway (put somewhere else) c- Fluent crashed several times, once because I set the computer to sleep after a simulation completed running, when the computer was turned on it reset by itself, which is why exporting case and data files as soon the simulation finishes is very important, to be able to import the data file and resume running. d- Changed the boundary condition of the top and side wall from inlet (what I was using) to moving solid walls (what David was using) and there was no difference in the results.

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FLUENT RUNS Benchmarking with David's results

Solid car with no hole

Experimenting with bellmouth design

Pipe with bellmouth

Changing pipe diameter

Added engine. pipe D=0.3m.

Pipe D=0.2m.

Changing pipe placement

As can be seen above, there were five design models:

Pipe lowered 3in.

1- Davids car with no hole, to compare and verify the results of this and his runs. 2- A completely arbitrary attempt at a bell mouth design, which luckily gave good results. 3- An added engine block to better represent a real car and the engine compartment. When the results were still good; 4- The pipe diameter was decreased to easier fit in the car and take less of the space inside. To make the design more reasonable. 5- The pipe was lowered for the same reason above (less obstruction of the inside of the car).

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Summary of results
Fluent Run A-No hole
Davids car no hole Kevins D=0.3m (no bell mouth)

Run conditions [# of iterations] lamtur2nd

-

Approx. velocity inside m/s 28

% faster than 12.8%

Cd 0.668
0.692 0.73

Total forces 395.2

B-Bell mouth C-Engine 0.3 D-Engine 0.2 E-Engine 0.2 lowered pipe
Table 1: summary of results

Lam[300]tur[110] converged Lam [1000]tur2nd[365] converged Lam[1000]tur[130] converged 1050:lamtur2nd

38 39.1 46 38.5

53.1% 57.5% 85.3% 55.1%

0.705 0.662 0.701 0.675

417.3 391.7 415 399.5

Davids results:

Table 2: excerpt from David's report.

Kevins results: Case Pipe OD (m) Nodes Elements Drag Velocity (m/s)
Table 3: excerpt from Kevin's report.

I 0.3 576815 394657 0.729997 28

II 0.2 723538 495448 0.71468 25

Discussion:
As can be seen from table.1. The secession of the runs was as follows: A- The car without a hole can be seen to have a cd of about 0.67, verified by Davids results as well. B- When adding the pipe of 0.3m Diameter with the bell mouth, the drag increased to 0.71. And the flow velocity inside the pipe was around 38m/s, 53% faster than the free flow outside the car. It is worth noting that Davids simulation with the same pipe had a similar drag penalty. But his measured velocity inside the pipe was merely 28m/s, only 13% increase in velocity. We can hypothesize from that that the bell mouth does not affect the drag much, but increases the velocity inside the pipe greatly. C- When the engine block was added, the drag surprisingly decreased to 0.66, even slightly smaller than the car with no hole, which was 0.67. However, the velocity did not increase much from the previous case without the engine block (3839 m/s). A possible explanation is that the engine block works as a 3D nozzle for the incoming flow. D- Next, when the pipe diameter was decreased from 0.3m to 0.2m, the velocity jumped to approximately 46m/s, an 85% increase compared to the free stream velocity. Page 9 of 10

However, to balance that, the drag increased back to 0.7, which is almost the same as the case without the engine block, and bigger than the drag without any hole. E- Finally, when the pipe was shifted vertically down 3 inches (diameter still 0.2m), the velocity jump inside the pipe was reduced to an acceptable 38.5m/s (55% increase). but on the other hand the big drag penalty was also replaced by a reasonable 0.68, halfway between the two previous cases.

CONCLUSION
Although the last Fluent run (E) -in which the pipe was lowered 3 inches-, doesnt have a pipe flow velocity as fast as the run with centered 0.2m diameter pipe(D), nor a drag as low as that of the 0.3m diameter pipe (C), it offers a good balance between the two, plus the placement of the pipe is more feasible for actual application inside passenger cars.

Improvements and future work

Verify mesh independence; refine the mesh and look for significant changes in results. Verify domain independence; extend the domain size (box of air), and look for significant change in results. Change the geometry and curves of the last case recommended in the conclusion to try to achieve the benefits of the other cases without sacrificing feasibility. Add a turbine inside the pipe and run transient simulations.

Links to project material available online

SolidWorks Geometry files https://grabcad.com/library/simplified-car-with-engine-andpipe-cavity-1 This project report http://www.scribd.com/doc/194362104/Car-With-Pipe-CavityMEG0200-Project Project presentation (PDF file) http://www.scribd.com/doc/194356581/Car-With-PipeCavity-MEG0200-Project

Feedback
If anything is not covered here or in the presentation feel free to contact me at Yussefrikli@gmail.com

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