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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 entire automotive industry is moving towards lower CO₂ emissions and higher energy efficiency. Especially for higher driving speeds this can be achieved by minimizing aerodynamic drag. Additionally, aerodynamic downforce is essential to maintain or even improve the handling performance of a vehicle. In order to optimize the vehicle's aerodynamic efficiency in wind tunnel tests, the boundary conditions of a vehicle driving on a road must be simulated properly. Particularly for optimizing the underbody region of a vehicle, ground simulation is an important issue in every wind tunnel. Today rolling road systems featuring one or more moving belts on the wind tunnel floor are a standard tool to simulate the complex boundary condition of a vehicle driving on the road. But generally the technical effort to measure aerodynamic forces accurately increases with improvement of the aerodynamic ground simulation.

For many years FKFS has operated the full-scale aeroacoustic wind tunnel of University of Stuttgart. To keep this wind tunnel as one of the most modern ones of its kind, it has again been upgraded significantly. The upgrade improved the aerodynamic as well as the aeroacoustic performance and accelerated the operational processes. Additionally, new innovative features have significantly enlarged the test capabilities. A new patented, modular belt system (FKFS first®) allows high performance measurements for race cars in a 3-belt mode as well as efficient measurements for production vehicle development in a 5-belt mode. The belt system is accompanied by a new, larger turntable and a new under-floor balance which enables high-accuracy measurements of forces and moments also for a high resolution in time. For the elimination of parasitic forces generated at the wheel drive units, a specific correction procedure has been implemented, which is patented, too (FKFS pace®).

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.

Within in the scope of a road load investigation project at FKFS, the influence of rotating wheels on the road load of a passenger car was investigated. For this purpose an approach was developed to measure the ventilation resistance of a spinning wheel. This approach enables a comparison of different wheel sizes and rim designs. Together with aerodynamic drag measurements in the wind tunnel it is possible to evaluate different wheel configurations with respect to their contribution to the road load. The measuring approach and results of performed measurements are shown in this paper.

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.

This paper presents some recent results concerning the generation and minimization of cooling air drag, achieved in an integrated approach of numerical and experimental investigations. The baseline configuration of a production cars' cooling air flow system is analyzed. The analysis of the created drag shows, that most of the force changes due to the cooling air flow appear in the front region of the vehicle. However, the forces generated by heat exchangers are only a small share of the total changes. Additional drag is generated for example by the front wheels and by the components of the underhood compartment. The investigation of the influence of the vehicle rear end shape on the aerodynamics of the cooling air flow system shows, that two similar cars with different rear end shapes (notchback and squareback) can feature different cooling air drag values.

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.

In 2001 the FKFS (Research Institute of Automotive Engineering and Vehicle Engines, Stuttgart) took into operation state-of-the-art 5-belt systems for road simulation in the 22.45m2-IVK automotive wind tunnel and in the 1.65m2-IVK model wind tunnel. In these systems, a narrow belt running between the vehicles' wheels is fitted with 4 balance-mounted wheel rotation drives and a vehicle restraint system. The FKFS opted for MTS steel belt technology due to its small size, low power requirements and excellent tracking stability. Due to air bearings below the belt, the flat-belt wheel rotation units in the full-scale wind tunnel permit aerodynamic force measurements at full wheel load (8 kN) up to 70 m/s. In combination with the hydrostatic suspension of the units, integrated longitudinal force transducers permit realistic measurements of the wheels' rolling resistance. In the model wind tunnel FKFS wheel rotation units with Poly-V belts are used with small wheel loads up to 80 m/s.

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.

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.