CFD Investigations of the Effect of Rotating Wheels, Ride Height and Wheelhouse Geometry on the Drag Coefficient of Electric Vehicle

The development of electric vehicles demands minimizing aerodynamic drag in order to provide maximum range. The wheels contribute significantly to overall drag coefficient value because of flow separation from rims and wheel arches. In this paper various design parameters are investigated and their influence on vehicle drag coefficient is presented. The investigation has been done with the help of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools and with implementation of full vehicle setup with rotating wheels. The obtained results demonstrate changes in drag coefficient with respect to the change of design parameters.