Influence of Rotating Wheels on Isolated Wheel Aerodynamics

Abstract:

To make a research on flow characteristics around wheel, simplified isolated wheel is applied under different conditions including stationary and rotation with different yaw angles by computational simulation, which is validated by experiments. Particularly, steady Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RNS) calculation is adopted in simulation in combination with experiment in a scaled wind tunnel of 1:15. Further, detailed analyses on local flow, surface pressure coefficient, drag coefficient and lift coefficient of wheel in different conditions figure out that rotating wheel affects the flow around the isolated wheel significantly. Pressure difference, drag coefficient and lift coefficient are decreased by the rotation, which improves aerodynamic performance.