Effects of Tire Attributes on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Generic Car-Tire Assembly1

Abstract

The effect of tires on the overall aerodynamic drag in a car-tire assembly has been studied and deemed considerable from past studies. Previous studies focused on the tire attributes that have an impact on the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle. These tire attributes, however, have not been studied to the extent where one can get a better understanding of the impact of each of these attributes. This paper studies the impact that specific tire attributes have on the overall aerodynamic drag on the vehicle. A thorough and systematic sensitivity study of the effect of tire attributes of a standalone tire was performed to better understand the flow structures around the car body and the improvement in the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle. In this study, the DrivAer model is used due to the extensive research that has been done on the model. Ansys FLUENT is used to run the Simulations on the fastback configuration of the DrivAer model. Coefficient of Drag and coefficient of pressure results from the simulations are validated from experimental data. This is used to create a simulation procedure with appropriate meshing techniques and solution methods in order to simulate for the baseline tire-vehicle assembly and the optimized tire-vehicle assembly. Data from these simulations are used to conduct a sensitivity analysis of the tire-vehicle assembly model to get better insight into the modelling techniques for a car-tire assembly, as well as the impact of the individual parameters for future tire model optimization.