Abstract
Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) is an integral part of external aerodynamic development at AUDI. The Virtual Wind Tunnel is particularly focused on the calculation during the early design phase.
Since CFD has been introduced to the industrial environment, external vehicle aerodynamics has been a major part of it. The well known Navier-Stokes methods, however, have not led to a breakthrough in the process integration of the overall aerodynamic calculation in the past. The principal reason is the current lack of fast turn around times and integration into the overall aerodynamic design process.
Nowadays the use of the Lattice Boltzmann method however, has minimized the turn around times at AUDI, because it does not require very time consuming 3D-mesh generation.
The present paper focuses on the integration of computational flow simulation methods in the early design process and - as an important aspect of process integration - the necessity of standardized post-processing. The reduced calculation times together with the high number of performed computations produce a large amount of results. Post-processing tools like EnSight offer a multitude of possibilities of visualizing results in order to obtain detailed insights into the physics of the flow.
The investigations are focussed on the integral parameters which decide on the aerodynamic properties of the considered vehicle.
The extensive data output and the various data formats used by different code providers lead to the requirement of standardized post-processing in order to obtain these integral parameters quickly and without extensive human input.
Additional to the process integration, obviously the quality of the results plays a major role. Therefor, based on a standardized post-processing, the results of flow field simulation of the AUDI A2 will be compared employing three different CFD tools. To evaluate the applicability of CFD tools for their industrial relevance, the results are compared to corresponding measurements.