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This paper presents a new approach to analyzing and developing low-drag cooling systems. A relation is derived which describes cooling drag by a number of contributions. Interference drag clearly can be identified as one of them. Cooling system parameters can be assigned to different terms of the relation, so that differences due to parameter variations of the individual drag contributions can be estimated. In order to predict the interference-drag dependency on the outlet location and the local outlet mass flow, an extensive study on a standard BMW sedan has been carried out, both experimentally and by CFD. The results show the importance of providing consistent outflow conditions which take into account the outlet location and flow direction, in order to minimize cooling drag.

Wind noise is a significant source of interior noise in automobiles at cruising conditions, potentially creating dissatisfaction with vehicle quality. While wind noise contributions at higher frequencies usually originate with transmission through greenhouse panels and sealing, the contribution coming from the underbody area often dominates the interior noise spectrum at lower frequencies. Continued pressure to reduce fuel consumption in new designs is causing more emphasis on aerodynamic performance, to reduce drag by careful management of underbody airflow at cruise. Simulation of this airflow by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools allows early optimization of underbody shapes before expensive hardware prototypes are feasible. By combining unsteady CFD-predicted loads on the underbody panels with a structural acoustic model of the vehicle, underbody wind noise transmission could be considered in the early design phases.

Within the pre-development phase of a vehicle validation process, the role of computational simulation is becoming increasingly prominent in efforts to ensure thermal safety. This gain in popularity has resulted from the cost and time advantages that simulation has compared to experimental testing. Additionally many of these early concepts cannot be validated through experimental means due to the lack of hardware, and must be evaluated via numerical methods. The Race Track Simulation (RTS) can be considered as the final frontier for vehicle thermal management techniques, and to date no coherent method has been published which provides an efficient means of numerically modeling the temperature behavior of components without the dependency on statistical experimental data.

Modern exhaust systems contain not only a piping network to transport hot gas from the engine to the atmosphere, but also functional components such as the catalytic converter and turbocharger. The turbocharger is common place in the automotive industry due to their capability to increase the specific power output of reciprocating engines. As the exhaust system is a main heat source for the under body of the vehicle and the turbocharger is located within the engine bay, it is imperative that accurate surface temperatures are achieved. A study by K. Haehndel [1] implemented a 1D fluid stream as a replacement to solving 3D fluid dynamics of the internal exhaust flow. To incorporate the 3D effects of internal fluid flow, augmented Nusselt correlations were used to produce heat transfer coefficients. It was found that the developed correlations for the exhaust system did not adequately represent the heat transfer of the turbocharger.

Raising demands towards lightweight design paired with a loss of originally predominant engine noise pose significant challenges for NVH engineers in the automotive industry. From an aeroacoustic point of view, low frequency buffeting ranks among the most frequently encountered issues. The phenomenon typically arises due to structural transmission of aerodynamic wall pressure fluctuations and/or, as indicated in this work, through rear vent excitation. A possible workflow to simulate structure-excited buffeting contains a strongly coupled vibro-acoustic model for structure and interior cavity excited by a spatial pressure distribution obtained from a CFD simulation. In the case of rear vent buffeting no validated workflow has been published yet. While approaches have been made to simulate the problem for a real-car geometry such attempts suffer from tremendous computation costs, meshing effort and lack of flexibility.

Efforts in aerodynamic optimization of road vehicles have been steadily increasing in recent years, mainly focusing on the reduction of aerodynamic drag. Of a car's total drag, wheels and wheel houses account for approx. 25 percent. Consequently, the flow around automotive wheels has lately been investigated intensively. Previously, the authors studied a treaded, deformable, isolated full-scale tire rotating in contact with the ground in the wind tunnel and using the Lattice-Boltzmann solver Exa PowerFLOW. It was shown that applying a common numerical setup, with velocity boundary condition prescribed on the tread, significant errors were introduced in the simulation. The contact patch separation was exaggerated and the flow field from wind tunnel measurements could not be reproduced. This investigation carries on the work by examining sensitivities and new approaches in the setup.

The G-equation model was implemented in the commercial code ANSYS CFX and validated against experimental data in order to successfully simulate turbulent premixed combustion in internal combustion engines. The model is based on the level-set approach. Two transport equations are solved respectively for the G-scalar mean value, representing the local distance function from the time-averaged mean flame front, and its variance, correlated to the turbulent flame brush thickness. The model closure for tracking the flame front is based on an algebraic expression for the turbulent burning velocity. The composition of the reacted mixture is evaluated by coupling the code with flamelet libraries generated with the ANSYS CFX-RIF package by means of a reaction progress variable computed as a function of the G-related quantities.

In large-scale industrial simulations the numerical prediction of fracture in sheet metal forming operations as well as in crash events is still a challenging task of high social and economic relevance. Among several approaches presented in literature, the authors and their colleagues developed a model which accounts each for three different mechanisms leading finally to fracture in thin sheet metals: the local instability (necking), ductile normal fracture and ductile shear fracture. The focus of this paper is to develop and validate a new approach to improve the predictive capabilities for fracture triggered by localized necking for a wide variety of steel grades. It is well known that after the onset of a local instability additional strain is still necessary to induce fracture. In a numerical simulation using shell elements this post instability strain becomes of increasing importance when the ratio of the characteristic shell element edge length to its thickness decreases.

The thermal prediction of a vehicle under-body environment is of high importance in the design, optimization and management of vehicle power systems. Within the pre-development phase of a vehicle's production process, it is important to understand and determine regions of high thermally induced stress within critical under-body components. Therefore allowing engineers to modify the design or alter component material characteristics before the manufacture of hardware. As the exhaust system is one of the primary heat sources in a vehicle's under-body environment, it is vital to predict the thermal fluctuation of surface temperatures along corresponding exhaust components in order to achieve the correct thermal representation of the overall under-body heat transfer. This paper explores a new method for achieving higher accuracy exhaust surface temperature predictions.

Knowing the wheel forces on a vehicle under various circumstances and configurations is essential for its aerodynamic development. This becomes crucial when dealing with a racing car. This was the driving force for the initial research conducted in the BMW Aerodynamics Department [1] concerning the aerodynamic forces of an isolated 1:2 racing wheel. The latter were determined for various arrangements with the use of a system equipped with pressure transducers distributed on the wheel surface. While the pressure wheel is adequate for revealing flow structures surrounding it as well as highlighting its physics, it is nevertheless insufficient for the prediction of the wheel forces with high accuracy. As will be shown, this is mainly the consequence of the absent contribution of skin friction, the mathematical method engaged in post–processing and the restricted number of pressure transducers.

A computational analysis of underbody windnoise sources on a production automobile at 180 km/h free stream air speed and 0° yaw is presented. Two different underbody geometry configurations were considered for this study. The numerical results have been obtained using the commercial software PowerFLOW. The simulation kernel of this software is based on the numerical scheme known as the Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM), combined with a two-equation RNG turbulence model. This scheme accurately captures time-dependent aerodynamic behavior of turbulent flows over complex detailed geometries, including the pressure fluctuations causing wind noise. Comparison of pressure fluctuations levels mapped on a fluid plane below the underbody shows very good correlation between experiment and simulation. Detailed flow analysis was done for both configurations to obtain insight into the transient nature of the flow field in the underbody region.

Currently, the aerodynamic development of a car concentrates on steady state aerodynamic forces. Development is mainly performed in wind tunnels with very low turbulence. On the road we find other boundary conditions. Natural wind, other cars and trucks influence the yawing moment and the side force. During acceleration and deceleration the vehicle speed is not constant, the effect of unsteady aerodynamic forces is especially important and can not be neglected. The approach to measure unsteady effects is to use a wind tunnel that has the capability to produce unsteady flow and in addition to instrument a car to drive under natural windy conditions. The wind tunnel, with its reproducible conditions, allows measurements to be made with well defined frequencies of the approaching flow. This is important since the aerodynamic forces are not sensitive to all frequencies in the same way. One way to increase driving comfort is to reduce these forces at specific frequencies.

As the popularity of vehicle navigation systems rises, incorporating Real Time Traffic Information (RTTI) has been shown to enhance the systems' value by helping drivers avoid traffic delays. As an innovative premium automaker, BMW has developed a testing process to acquire and analyze RTTI data in order to ensure delivery of a high quality service and to enhance the customer experience compared to audible broadcast services. With a methodology to obtain valid and repeatable RTTI data quality measurements, BMW and its service partner, Clear Channel's Total Traffic Network (TTN), can improve its offered service over time, implement corrective measures when appropriate, and confidently ensure the service meets its premium objectives. BMW has partnered with TTN and SoftSolutions GmbH to implement a traffic data quality process and software tools.

Underbody aerodynamics has become increasingly important over the last three decades because of its vital contribution to improving a vehicle's overall performance. This was the motivation for the research conducted by BMW Aerodynamics, concerning the determination of the overall pressure distribution on the underbody of a series-production vehicle. Static pressure measurements have been taken under various test conditions. Real on-road tests were carried out as well as wind tunnel experiments under application of different road simulation techniques. The analyzed vehicle configurations include wheel rim-tire and body modifications. The results presented include surface pressure data, drag and lift coefficients, ride heights, pitch and roll angles. The acquired data is used to examine the underbody flow topology and determine how the diverse attempts to represent the real on-road conditions affect its pressure distribution.

For most car manufacturers, aerodynamic noise is becoming the dominant high frequency noise source (> 500 Hz) at highway speeds. Design optimization and early detection of issues related to aeroacoustics remain mainly an experimental art implying 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 development of a reliable numerical prediction capability. The goal of this paper is to present a computational approach developed to predict the greenhouse windnoise contribution to the interior noise heard by the vehicle passengers. This method is based on coupling an unsteady Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver for the windnoise excitation to a Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) solver for the structural acoustic behavior.

The validity of numerical simulations is still limited by the unknown failure of materials when nonlinear load paths in successive stamping and crash processes occur. Localized necking is the main mechanism for fractures in ductile sheet metal. The classical forming limit curve (FLC) is limited to linear strain paths. To include the effects of nonlinear strain paths a theoretical model for instability (algorithm CRACH) has been used. The algorithm has been developed on the basis of the Marciniak model [8]. The calibration and validation of this approach is done by a set of multistage experiments under static and dynamic strain rates for a mild steel.

Future catalyst systems need to be highly efficient in a limited packaging space. This normally leads to a design where the flow distribution, in front of the catalyst, is not perfectly uniform. Measurements on the flow test bench show that the implementation of perforated foils for the corrugated and flat foils has the capability to distribute the flow within the channels in the radial direction so that the maximum of the given catalyst surface is of use, even under very poor uniformity indices. Therefore a remarkable reduction in back pressure is measured. Emission results demonstrate cold start improvement due to reduced heat capacity. The use of LS - structured ( Longitudinal structured ) corrugated foils creates a high turbulence level within the single channels. The substrate lights-up earlier and the maximum conversion efficiency is reached more quickly.

In the near future the effort on the development of exhaust gas treatment systems must be increased to meet the stringent emission requirements. If the relevant physical and chemical models are available, the numerical simulation is an important tool for the design of these systems. This work presents a CFD model that allows to cover the full range of applications in this area. After a detailed presentation of the theoretical background and the modeling strategies results for the simulation of a close-coupled catalyst are shown. The presented model is also applied to the oxidation of nitrogen oxides, to a diesel particle filter and a fuel-cell reformer catalyst.

Unsteady aerodynamic flow phenomena are investigated in the wind tunnel by oscillating a realistic 50% scale model around its vertical axis. Thus the model is exposed to time-dependent flow conditions at realistic Reynolds and Strouhal numbers. Using this setup unsteady aerodynamic loads are observed to differ significantly from quasi-steady loads. In particular, the unsteady yaw moment exceeds the quasi-steady approximation by 80%. On the other hand, side force and roll moment are over predicted by quasi-steady approximation but exhibit a significant time delay. Using hotwire anemometry, a delayed reaction of the wake flow of Δt/T = 0.15 is observed, which is thought to be the principal cause for the differences between unsteady and quasi-steady aerodynamic loads. A schematic mechanism explaining these differences due to the delayed reaction of the wake flow is proposed.

Unsteady aerodynamic flow phenomena are investigated in a wind tunnel by oscillating a realistic 50% scale model around the vertical axis. Thus the model is exposed to time-dependent flow conditions at realistic Reynolds and Strouhal numbers. Using this setup unsteady aerodynamic loads are observed to differ significantly from quasi steady loads. In particular, the unsteady yaw moment exceeds the quasi steady approximation significantly. On the other hand, side force and roll moment are over predicted by quasi steady approximation but exhibit a significant time delay. Part 2 of this study proves that a delayed and enhanced response of the surface pressures at the rear side of the vehicle is responsible for the differences between unsteady and quasi steady loads. The pressure changes at the vehicle front, however, are shown to have similar amplitudes and almost no phase shift compared to quasi steady flow conditions.