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Windscreen wipers are an integral component of the windscreen cleaning systems of most vehicles, trains, cars, trucks, boats and some planes. Wipers are used to clear rain, snow, and dirt from the windscreen pushing the water from the wiped surface. Under certain conditions however, water which has been driven to the edge of the windscreen by the wiper can be drawn back into the driver’s field of view by aerodynamic forces introduced by the wiper motion. This is wiper drawback, an undesirable phenomenon as the water which is drawn back on to the windscreen can reduce driver’s vision and makes the wiper less effective. The phenomena of wiper drawback can be tested for in climatic tunnels using sprayer systems to wet the windscreen. However, these tests require a bespoke test property or prototype vehicle, which means that the tests are done fairly late in the development of the vehicle.

The management of surface water flows driven from the wind screen by the action of wipers and aerodynamic shear is a growing challenge for automotive manufacturers. Pressure to remove traditional vehicle features, such as A-Pillar steps for aesthetic, aeroacoustic and aerodynamic reasons increases the likelihood that surface water may be convected over the A-Pillar and onto the front side glass where it can compromise drivers’ vision. The ability to predict where and under which conditions the A-Pillar will be breached is important for making correct design decisions. The use of numerical simulation in this context is desirable, as experimental testing relies on the use of aerodynamics test properties which will not be fully representative, or late-stage prototypes, making it difficult and costly to correct issues. This paper provides an update on the ability of simulation to predict A-Pillar overflow, comparing physical and numerical results for a test vehicle.

Exhaust systems are a necessary solution to reduce combustion engine noise originating from flow fluctuations released at each firing cycle. However, exhaust systems also generate a back pressure detrimental for the engine efficiency. This back pressure must be controlled to guarantee optimal operating conditions for the engine. To satisfy both optimal operating conditions and optimal noise levels, the internal design of exhaust systems has become complex, often leading to the emergence of undesired noise generated by turbulent flow circulating inside a muffler. Associated details needed for the manufacturing process, such as brackets for the connection between parts, can interact with the flow, generating additional flow noise or whistles. To minimize the risks of undesirable noise, multiple exhaust designs must be assessed early to prevent the late detection of issues, when design and manufacturing process are frozen. However, designing via an experimental approach is challenging.

Exhaust systems including mufflers are commonly mounted on engines to reduce the firing cycle noise originating from the combustion process. However, mufflers also produce flow-induced self-noise, originating from the complex flow path throughout the muffler. As an engine prototype is not available in the early stages of a development program, it is challenging to assess the acoustic performance of the full system when only experiment is available. It is also difficult to pinpoint the design features of a muffler generating noise, as a portion of the noise is generated internally. Numerical approaches are a possible alternative. However, capturing non-linear dissipation mechanisms and thermal fluctuations of exhaust flows is challenging, while necessary to accurately predict flow noise.

Thermal performance of a brake system is one of the key attributes in a new vehicle development process. Adequate brake cooling characteristics are part of the vehicle performance and safety requirements. The design of a new brake system, however, can be a complex task from a thermal engineering perspective, particularly because of complex interactions between the brake component and the rest of the vehicle. Frequently, the vehicle integration issues are the most serious challenges for brake engineers. There are considerations on how much heat should be dissipated from a single and/or consecutive braking events vs. how much cooling can be provided to the brake corner. Design issues such as where to direct the cooling air to how much flexibility is allowed while complying with other requirements from the studio and aero teams. For a brake engineer, the priority is to maximize cooling to the brake corner and prevent system failure.

Side window clarity and its effect on side mirror visibility plays a major role in driver comfort. Driving in inclement weather conditions such as rain can be stressful, and having optimal visibility under these conditions is ideal. However, extreme conditions can overwhelm exterior water management devices, resulting in rivulets of water flowing over the a-pillar and onto the vehicle’s side glass. Once on the side glass, these rivulets and the pooling of water they feed, can significantly impair the driver’s ability to see the side mirror and to see outwardly when in situations such as changing lanes. Designing exterior water management features of a vehicle is a challenging exercise, as traditionally, physical testing methods first require a full-scale vehicle for evaluations to be possible. Additionally, common water management devices such as grooves and channels often have undesirable aesthetic, drag, and wind noise implications.

The development of a new Dongfeng Heavy truck had very strict targets for fuel consumption. As the aerodynamic drag plays a crucial role for the fuel consumption, a low drag value had to be achieved. It was therefore essential to include evaluation and optimization of the aerodynamics in the development process. Because wind tunnel facilities were not available, the complete aerodynamics development was based on digital simulation. The major portion of the aerodynamic optimization was carried out during the styling phase where mirrors, sun visor, front bumper and aero devices were optimized for drag reduction. For optimizing corner vanes and mud guards, self-soiling from the wheel spray was included in the analysis. The aero results did also show that cooling air flow rates are sufficiently high to ensure proper cooling. During the detailed engineering phase an increase of the drag above the target required further optimization work to finally reach the target.

Trucks can carry heavy load and when applying the brakes during for example a mountain downhill or for an abrupt stop, the brake temperatures can rise significantly. Elevated temperatures in the drum brake region can reduce the braking efficiency or can even cause the brake system to fail, catch fire or even break. It therefore needs to be designed such to be able to transfer the heat out of its system by convection, conduction and/or radiation. All three heat transfer modes play an important role since the drum brakes of trucks are not much exposed to external airflow, a significant difference from disk brakes of passenger cars analyzed in previous studies. This makes it a complex heat transfer problem which is not easy to understand. Numerical methods provide insight by visualization of the different heat transfer modes. Presented is a numerical method that simulates the transient heat transfer of a truck drum brake system cooldown at constant driving speed.

The object of the validation study presented in this paper is a generic vehicle, the so-called SAE body, developed by a consortium of German car manufacturers (Audi, Daimler, Porsche, Volkswagen). Many experiments have been performed by the abovementioned consortium on this object in the past to investigate its behavior when exposed to fluid flow. Some of these experiments were used to validate the simulation results discussed in the present paper. It is demonstrated that the simulation of the exterior flow is able to represent the transient hydrodynamic structures and at the same time both the generation of the acoustic sources and the propagation of the acoustic waves. Performing wave number filtering allows to identify the acoustic phenomena and separate them from the hydrodynamic effects. In a next step, the noise transferred to the interior of the cabin through the glass panel was calculated, using a Statistical Energy Analysis approach.

Exhaust and muffler noise is a challenging problem in the transport industry. While the main purpose of the system is to reduce the intensity of the acoustic pulses originating from the engine exhaust valves, the back pressure induced by these systems must be kept to a minimum to guarantee maximum performance of the engine. Emitted noise levels have to ensure comfort of the passengers and must respect community noise regulations. In addition, the exhaust noise plays an important role in the brand image of vehicles, especially with sports car where it must be tuned to be “musical”. However, to achieve such performances, muffler and exhaust designs have become quite complex, often leading to the rise of undesired self-induced noise. Traditional purely acoustic solvers, like Boundary Element Methods (BEM), have been applied quite successfully to achieve the required acoustic tuning.

Car manufacturers put large efforts into reducing wind noise to improve the comfort level of their cars. Each component of the vehicle is designed to meet its individual noise target to ensure the wind noise passenger comfort level inside the vehicle is met. Sunroof designs are tested to meet low-frequency buffeting (also known as boom) targets and broadband noise targets for the fully open sunroof with deflector and for the sunroof in vent position. Experimentally testing designs and making changes to meet these design targets typically involves high cost prototypes, expensive wind tunnel sessions, and potentially late design changes. To reduce the associated costs as well as development times, there is strong motivation for the use of a reliable numerical prediction capability early in the vehicle design process.

This paper presents an approach to numerically simulate greenhouse windnoise. The term “greenhouse windnoise” here describes the sound transferred to the interior through the glass panels of a series vehicle. Different panels, e.g. the windshield or sideglass, are contributing to the overall noise level. Attached parts as mirrors or wipers are affecting the flow around the vehicle and thus the pressure fluctuations which are acting as loads onto the panels. Especially the wiper influence and the effect of different wiper positions onto the windshield contribution is examined and set in context with the overall noise levels and other contributors. In addition, the effect of different flow yaw angles on the windnoise level in general and the wiper contributions in particular are demonstrated. As computational aeroacoustics requires accurate, highly resolved simulation of transient and compressible flow, a Lattice-Boltzmann approach is used.

A computational process for early stage vehicle shape assessment for automotive front window buffeting and greenhouse wind noise is presented. It is a challenging problem in an experimental process as the vehicle geometry is not always finalized. For example, the buffeting behavior typically worsens during the vehicle development process as the vehicle gets tighter, leading to expensive late counter measures. We present a solution using previously validated CFD/CAA software based on the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM). A CAD model with realistic automotive geometry was chosen to simultaneously study the potential of different side mirror geometries to influence the front window buffeting and greenhouse wind noise phenomena. A glass mounted mirror and a door mounted mirror were used for this comparative study. Interior noise is investigated for the two phenomena studied. The unsteady flow is visualized and changes in the buffeting and wind noise behavior are explored.

Water accumulating on a vehicle's wind screen, driven over the A-pillar by a combination of aerodynamic forces and the action of the windscreen wipers, can be a significant impediment to driver vision. Surface water film, or streams, persisting in key vision areas of the side glass can impair the drivers' ability to see clearly through to the door mirror, and laterally onto junctions. Common countermeasures include: water management channels and hydrophobic glass coatings. Water management channels have both design and wind noise implications. Hydrophobic coatings entail significant cost. In order to manage this design optimisation issue a water film and wiper effect model has been developed in collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover, extending the capabilities of the PowerFLOW CFD software. This is complimented by a wind-tunnel based test method for development and validation. The paper presents the progress made to date.

Systematic numerical simulations were performed for the improvement of fuel efficiency and thermal performance of a compact size passenger vehicle. Both aerodynamic and thermal aspects were considered concurrently. For the sake of systematic evaluation, our study was conducted employing various design changes in multiple steps: 1) analysis of the baseline design; 2) elimination of the engine room components; 3) modification of the engine room component layout; 4) modification of the aerodynamic components (such as under body cover and cooling ducts). The vehicle performance characteristics corresponding to different design options were analyzed in terms of aerodynamic coefficient, engine coolant temperature, and surface temperatures of thermally critical components such as battery and exhaust manifold. Finally optimal design modification solutions for better vehicle performance were proposed.

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.

Many critical thermal issues that occur in vehicles are uncovered only under more “thermally stressed” driving conditions that are transient in nature such as abruptly changing vehicle speed or turning off fan and engine. Therefore, for flow simulations to be useful in the vehicle design process, it is imperative that these simulations have the ability to accurately model long term transient thermal convection on full vehicles. Presented are simulations for a passenger vehicle driving at 60 kilometers per hour followed by a complete stop. The simulations were performed using a coupling between the flow and thermal solver and in the process, taking into account convection, conduction and radiation effects. Temperature predictions were made both under steady state conditions and during the key-off. Good agreement with the measurements was observed.

A newly developed simulation methodology for a long term, transient tractor cabin cool-down is presented in this paper. The air flow was simulated using a Lattice-Boltzmann Equation (LBE) based 3-dimensional flow solver. The conduction and radiation effects on the solid parts as well as the average cabin air temperature evolution were solved by the thermal solver, which also includes a human comfort model. The simulation results were compared with the measured experimental test data and good agreement was observed validating the developed simulation approach. The developed methodology can be applied to all other ground vehicles cabin comfort applications.

A validation study was performed comparing the simulation results of the Lattice-Boltzmann Equation (LBE) based flow solver, PowerFLOW®, to cooling cell measurements conducted at Volvo Trucks North America (VTNA). The experimental conditions were reproduced in the simulations including dynamometer cell geometry, fully detailed under-hood, and external tractor geometry. Interactions between the air flow and heat exchangers were modeled through a coupled simulation with the 1D-tool, PowerCOOL™, to solve for engine coolant and charge air temperatures. Predicted temperatures at the entry and exit plane of the radiator and charge-air-cooler were compared to thermocouple measurements. In addition, a detailed flow analysis was performed to highlight regions of fan shroud loss and cooling airflow recirculation. This information was then used to improve cooling performance in a knowledge-based incremental design process.

More stringent heavy vehicle emissions legislation demands considerably higher performance for engine cooling systems. This paper presents a study of cooling airflow for a Freightliner Class 8 truck. The predicted radiator coolant inlet and charge-air-cooler outlet temperatures are in very good agreement with the measured data. The under hood flow behavior is described and potential areas of improvement leading to better cooling airflow performance are highlighted. The airflow simulation approach is based on the Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) and is described in detail. It is shown that the presented simulation approach can provide accurate predictions of cooling airflow and coolant temperature across different fan speeds.