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This paper presents an integrated numerical and experimental approach to take best possible advantage of the common development tools at hand (1D, CFD and wind tunnel) to determine the cooling air mass flow at the different vehicle development stages. 1D tools can be used early in development when neither 3D data nor wind tunnel models with detailed underhood flow are available. A problem that has to be resolved is the dependency on input data. In particular, the pressure coefficients on the outer surface (i.e. at the air inlet and outlet region) and the pressure loss data of single components are of great importance since the amount of cooling air flow is directly linked to these variables. The pressure coefficients at the air inlet and outlet are not only a function of vehicle configuration but also of driving velocity and fan operation. Both, static and total pressure coefficient, yield different advantages and disadvantages and can therefore both be used as boundary conditions.

The reliability of electronic components is of increasing importance for further progress towards automated driving. Thermal aging processes such as electromigration is one factor that can negatively affect the reliability of electronics. The resulting failures depend on the thermal load of the components within the vehicle lifetime - called temperature collective - which is described by the temperature frequency distribution of the components. At present, endurance testing data are used to examine the temperature collective for electronic components in the late development stage. The use of numerical simulation tools within Vehicle Thermal Management (VTM) enables lifetime thermal prediction in the early development stage, but also represents challenges for the current VTM processes [1, 2]. Due to the changing focus from the underhood to numerous electronic compartments in vehicles, the number of simulation models has steadily increased.

In this article the unsteady aerodynamic properties of a 25% scale DrivAer notchback model as well as the influence of the wind tunnel environment on the resulting unsteady aerodynamic forces and moments under crosswind excitation are investigated using experimental and corresponding numerical methods. Research Institute of Automotive Engineering and Vehicle Engines Stuttgart (FKFS) swing® (side wind generator) is used to reproduce the essential properties of natural stochastic crosswind in the open jet test section of the Institute for Internal Combustion Engines and Automotive Engineering (IVK) model scale wind tunnel (MWK). The results show that the test environment of an open jet wind tunnel alters the amplitudes of side force and yaw moment under crosswind excitation when compared to an ideal environment neglecting wind tunnel interference effects.

In this paper the influence of different turbulent flow conditions on the aerodynamic drag of a quarter scale model with notchback and estate back rear ends is investigated. FKFS swing® (Side Wind Generator) is used to generate a turbulent flow field in the test section of the IVK model scale wind tunnel. In order to investigate the increase in drag with increasing yaw, a steady state yaw sweep is performed for both vehicle models. The shape of the drag curves vary for each vehicle model. The notchback model shows a more pronounced drag minimum at 0° yaw angle and experiences a more severe increase in drag at increasing yaw when compared to the estate back model. Unsteady time averaged aerodynamic drag values are obtained at two flow situations with different turbulent length scales, turbulence intensities, and yaw angle amplitudes. While the first one is representing light wind, the second one is recreating the presence of strong gusty wind.

In addition to the analysis of human driving behavior or the development of new advanced driver assistance systems, the high simulation quality of today’s driving simulators enables investigations of selected topics pertaining to driving dynamics. With high reproducibility and fast generation of vehicle variants the subjective evaluation process leads to a better system understanding in the early development stages. The transfer of the original on-road test run to the virtual reality of the driving simulator includes the full flexibility of the vehicle model, the maneuver and the test track, which allows new possibilities of investigation. With the opportunity of a realistic whole-vehicle simulation provided by the Stuttgart Driving Simulator new analysis of the human’s thresholds of perception are carried out.

The combination of enhanced powertrains and adapted vehicle concepts can reduce the energy demand of vehicles significantly, especially when energy conversion efficiency rises and at the same time driving resistances decrease. In addition, new powertrain concepts are able to offer extra functionality due to a growing cross-linking with chassis and vehicle body. The design of highly linked vehicles and powertrain systems requires additional new development methods in order to answer interacting questions of driving dynamics and vehicle energy efficiency at an early stage of development. In the paper a database-based simulation platform is presented which was developed at the IVK of the University of Stuttgart in cooperation with the Research Institute of Automotive Engineering and Vehicle Engines Stuttgart (FKFS). The simulation platform is used as an example to discuss mass reducing developments for various powertrain concepts.

In this paper the effect of aerodynamic modifications that influence the unsteady aerodynamic properties of a vehicle on the response of the closed loop system driver-vehicle under side wind conditions is investigated. In today's aerodynamic optimization the side wind sensitivity of a vehicle is determined from steady state values measured in the wind tunnel. There, the vehicle is rotated with respect to the wind tunnel flow to create an angle of attack. In this approach however, the gustiness that is inherent in natural wind is not reproduced. Further, unsteady forces and moments acting on the vehicle are not measured due to the limited dynamic response of the commonly used wind tunnel balances. Therefore, a new method is introduced, overcoming the shortcomings of the current steady state approach. The method consists of the reproduction of the properties of natural stochastic crosswind that are essential for the determination of the side wind sensitivity of a vehicle.

The range of applicability and the physical restrictions for the use of ground-simulation techniques in automotive wind tunnels are elucidated. The techniques considered are the moving-belt technique, as well as boundary layer control techniques like tangential blowing and distributed normal suction for use in wind tunnels with stationary ground boards. Attention has to be paid to the question of whether the flow to be simulated is of boundary layer or Couette type. In the case of boundary layer flow, interaction of the ground-floor boundary layer with the inviscid flow in the gap between a vehicle and the road can be fully simulated by introducing a negative transpiration velocity along the stationary ground plane. In practise however, angularity effects on the external flow result from mismatched control parameters. Very small relative ground clearances give rise to the formation of a Couette flow between the road and the vehicle.

Wind tunnel interference effects are still considered to be negligible - or at least undesired - in automotive aerodynamics. Consequently, up to now there is no standard correction method which is used in everyday wind tunnel testing although a lot of research has been done in recent years. In most full-vehicle CFD simulations, wind tunnel interference effects are not simulated. The flow about the car is computed under idealized conditions. The wind tunnel is designed to simulate these conditions but fails to do so to some degree due to its limited size. Therefore a comparison of blockage-free CFD results and wind tunnel measurements is deficient. Hence CFD simulations including wind tunnel interference effects should be favored in the future for validation purposes. Furthermore, CFD offers new possibilities to investigate individual contributions to wind tunnel interference effects and therefore could help to increase the understanding of the flow in the wind tunnel.

Aerodynamic simulations using CFD is now a standard tool in the automotive industry, and is becoming more and more integrated in the aerodynamic design process of new vehicles. This process is distinguished by parallel development with wind tunnel experiments and CFD simulation results, which demands comparable results to be generated by the two development tools. As wind tunnel effects are not simulated in most industrial applications of CFD, the comparison with experimental results normally show differences partly due to wind tunnel effects and ground simulation effects. Therefore a deeper understanding of wind tunnel effects and methods to fully reproduce experimental values with CFD is necessary. In this paper, an extensive validation study with a detailed scale notchback model inside an open jet wind tunnel is presented. This study includes experimental data from the real wind tunnel as well as CFD simulation results with and without wind tunnel effects.

Previous work by the authors showed the development of an aerodynamic CFD model using the Lattice Boltzmann Method for simulating vehicles inside the IVK Model-Scale Wind-Tunnel test-section. In both experiment and simulation, alternate configurations of the wind-tunnel geometry were studied to change the pressure distribution in the wind-tunnel test section, inducing a reduction in aerodynamic drag due to interference between the wind-tunnel geometry and the pressure on the surface of the vehicle. The wind-tunnel pressure distribution was modified by adding so-called “stagnation bodies” inside the collector to create blockage and to increase the pressure in the rear portion of the test section. The primary purpose of previous work was to provide a validated CFD approach for modeling wind-tunnel interference effects, so that these effects can be understood and accounted for when designing vehicles.

This paper presents velocity and pressure measurements obtained around an isolated wheel in a rotating and stationary configuration. The flow field was investigated using LDA and a total pressure probe in the model scale wind tunnel at IVK/FKFS. Drag and lift were determined for both configurations as well as for the wheel support only. These results were used as a reference for comparing numerical results obtained from two different CFD codes used in the automotive industry, namely STAR-CD™ and PowerFLOW™. The comparison gives a good overall agreement between the experimental and the simulated data. Both CFD codes show good correlation of the integral forces. The influence of the wheel rotation on drag and lift coefficients is predicted well. All mean flow structures which can be found in the planes measured with LDA can be recognized in the numerical results of both codes. Only small local differences remain, which can be attributed to the different CFD codes.

In automotive wind tunnels with modern road simulation installations boundary layer pre-suction is a widely-used technique for boundary layer control. The consequence of boundary layer pre-suction is an additional pressure gradient in front of the model. In order to investigate the effects of the additional pressure gradient on drag, experiments were conducted with two different models (scale 1:5) in the IVK Model Wind Tunnel. In these experiments the suction velocity of the boundary layer pre-suction served as a parameter to change the static pressure gradient along the test section and was for this purpose adjusted higher and lower than the standard suction velocity. It is shown that the total drag increment due to boundary layer pre-suction consists of at least two parts: the ground simulation increment and the static pressure gradient increment. The ground simulation increment is due to a decrease in the boundary layer thickness and the resulting modified flow beneath the model.

During the acquisition phase brake system supplier have to make predictions on a system's thermal behavior based on very few reliable parameters. Increasing system knowledge requires the usage of different calculation models along with the progress of the project. Adaptive modeling is used in order to integrate test results from first prototypes or benchmark vehicles. Since changes in the brake force distribution have a great impact on the simulation results fading conditions of the linings have to be integrated as well. The principle of co-simulation is used in order to use the actual brake force distribution of the system.

This paper introduces a driving-torque measurement method for the determination of vehicle road load and its components. To increase the accuracy, the torque measurements are combined with rolling resistance measurements performed with a specially developed trailer. This method is a strictly experimental approach and does not use any mathematical models. The experimental techniques are described as well as the proceedings to compare test stand and road measurements. The results that are shown prove that this method is suitable for the investigation of single road load components. Furthermore, the comparison of different rolling resistance measurement devices shows the potential of the measurement trailer and the necessity to perform rolling resistance measurements on real road surfaces and not solely on test stands.

There is a growing need for life-cycle data – so-called collectives – when developing components like elastomer engine mounts. Current standardized extreme load cases are not sufficient for establishing such collectives. Supplementing the use of endurance testing data, a prediction methodology for component temperature collectives utilizing existing 3D CFD simulation models is presented. The method uses support points to approximate the full collective. Each support point is defined by a component temperature and a position on the time axis of the collective. Since it is the only currently available source for component temperature data, endurance testing data is used to develop the new method. The component temperature range in this data set is divided in temperature bands. Groups of driving states are determined which are each representative of an individual band. Each of the resulting four driving state spaces is condensed into a substitute load case.

With its recent wind tunnel upgrade, FKFS installed the first interchangeable three-belt / five-belt-system (FKFS first®) in a full scale automotive wind tunnel. With the five-belt system, which today is a state-of-the-art ground simulation technique, the system is ideally suited for production vehicle development work. The five-belt system offers high flexibility, quick access to the underfloor and vehicle fixation, and setting the vehicle’s ride height by the restraint device. The first results of the five-belt system have already been published in SAE 2015-01-1557 [1]. The three-belt system on the other hand, offers a much more sophisticated ground simulation technique which is necessary especially for sports and racing cars. For such vehicles with very low ground clearances, it is important to have a more accurate ground simulation, in order to capture the same aerodynamic modes of action and response as on the road.

Wind noise has become an important indicator for passenger automobile quality. Several transmission paths can be related to different parts of the vehicle exterior. While the greenhouse (side glasses, windshield, seals & others) often dominates the interior noise level above 500 Hz, the contribution coming from the underbody area usually dominates the interior noise spectrum at lower frequencies. This paper describes a framework of numerical tools which is capable of determining realistic underbody turbulent and acoustic loads being generated for typical driving conditions, as well as performing the noise transmission through underbody panels and the propagation of sound to the drivers ear location.

In the digital prototype development process of a new Mercedes-Benz, thermal protection is an important task that has to be fulfilled. In the early stages of development, numerical methods are used to detect thermal hotspots in order to protect temperature sensitive parts. These methods involve transient full Vehicle Thermal Management (VTM) simulations to predict dynamic vehicle heat-up during critical load cases. In order to simulate thermal control mechanisms, a coupled 1D to 3D thermal vehicle model is built in which the coolant and oil circuit of the engine, as well as the exhaust flow are captured in detail. When performing a transient 3D VTM analysis, the conduction and radiation phenomena are simulated using a transient structure model while the convective phenomena are co-simulated in a steady state fluid model. Both models are brought to interaction at predetermined points by an automatized coupling method.

The present paper reveals the design concept as well as results of experimental investigations, which were conducted in the early design stage of the planned AUDI Aero-Acoustic Wind Tunnel. This low-noise open-jet facility, featuring a nozzle exit area of 11 m2 and a top speed of approximately 60 m/s, enables aerodynamic as well as acoustic testing of both, full-scale and model-scale ground vehicles. Ground simulation is provided by means of a moving-belt rig. The surrounding plenum is designed as a semi-anechoic chamber to simulate acoustic free-field conditions around the vehicle. Fan noise will be attenuated below the noise level of the open jet. The work reported herein, comprises 1/8-scale pilot-tunnel experiments of aerodynamic and acoustic configurations which were carried out at the University of Darmstadt.