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The Wuling Rongguang is a small van which uses a mid-engine layout where the engine is located underneath the floor panel in-between front and rear wheels. A particular challenge for this kind of layout is the protection of the engine against soiling. Typical protective measures consist of large mudguards in combination with an engine cover. While needed for soiling protection, these parts can have a strongly adverse effect on aerodynamic drag. This paper describes process and the results of the aerodynamic optimization of the underbody of the Wuling Rongguang. Because design changes had to be evaluated for aerodynamics performance as well as for their effect on the soiling, a digital approach was used which allowed to do the soiling analysis as a post processing to the flow simulation. As a first step, a baseline model was built and analyzed. This included the development of a soiling model taking into account wheel spray and splashing effects.

Traditionally vehicles are designed for wind noise under ideal steady wind conditions. But, passenger comfort is affected by high modulation of cabin noise while cruising in traffic due to variations of instantaneous wind speed and direction from driving through large-scale turbulence. In consequence, designing a vehicle for the best performance in a low-turbulence wind tunnel may lead to issues during on-road conditions. To predict the interior noise corresponding to on-road turbulence, a simulation approach is proposed combining an upstream turbulence flow simulation with an SEA vehicle model. This work is an extension of existing well validated procedures for steady wind conditions. Time-segmented transient loads on panels and steady-state structural acoustics transfer functions are combined, producing interior noise results for a series of overlapping time segments.