초록
Computer simulation of the air flow over an automotive vehicle is now becoming a routine process in automotive industry to assess the aerodynamic characteristics of a medium-size vehicle such as $C_d\;and\;C_1$ and aslo to investigate the possibility of improving aerodynamic performance of the vehicle as a preliminary design for the production line. Mainly due to its contribution in saving time and cost in the development of new cars, computer simulation of the air flow over a vehicle is usually done well before a production car is introduced to the market and in gaining more and more attention as powerful computer resources are getting readily available nowadays. To aerodynamically design a car is mainly related with reducing a drag coefficient of car. A well designed car usually has a $C_d$ value in the range of $0.3{\sim}0.4$. It is understandable that automotive industry is rushing to reduce a drag coefficient as reducing even a small fraction of the $C_d$ value can have an enormous overall impact on many areas. Actually, the present research model was able to achieve a $C_d$ value in the range of $0.3{\sim}0.36$ for flow velocities of $60km/h{\sim}100km/h$ by strategically removing the possible factor hazardous to lower $C_d$ value. Prediction of the medium-size vehicle aerodynamics using CFD was performed when an actual car model was in the development stage and three-dimensional modeling was also performed to optimize it as the best model in terms of the best aerodynamic performance.
