Experimental and numerical analysis of vortex generators designed for utility vehicles

Abstract

The main goal of today’s car designers is to minimize fuel consumption in all possible ways at the same time maintaining the vehicle’s performance as usual. The goal of this work is to study the effect of adding a vortex generator (VG) on the aerodynamics of the vehicle and fuel economy. Both theoretical and experimental works were carried out and the outcomes of the numerical simulations are contrasted with those of the experimental results. A utility vehicle model with a scale ratio of 1:15 was used as a test model. Experimental research has been done on the fluctuation of the coefficient of pressure, dynamic pressure, and coefficients of lift and drag with and without VG on the roof of a utility vehicle. The delta-shaped VG was put to the test both numerically and experimentally. At a velocity of 2.42 m/s, it is observed that the addition of VG can raise the pressure coefficient by about 17%. When compared to the vehicle model without vortex generators, the velocity profile of the ccomputational fluid dynamics analysis shows that at the back end of the vehicle, the wake has been minimized with VG.