Numerical Analysis of the Influence of Particular Parts of the High Efficient Electric Vehicle on the Aerodynamic Forces

The work presents a three-dimensional modeling of air flow around the research object. The purpose of this work was to perform numerical calculations to identify the magnitude of the aerodynamic drag force generated on individual elements of a high energy efficiency vehicle body. This vehicle, specially designed for the Shell Eco-marathon competition, needs to show the lowest possible fuel consumption while maintaining the prescribed speed. Minimizing the drag force at an early designing stage plays an important role here. The calculations were performed using the ANSYS Fluent calculation solver. The result of the conducted research is a description of the velocity and pressure distributions around the tested vehicle as well as an identification of the drag force on the external surfaces of the components and a description of the relationship between them. The work also discusses the dependence of the drag force as a function of speed in the range from 0 to 12 m/s. The influence of the ground on the drag force in the case when the object was immobilized in relation to the walls at the flowing medium, as in a wind tunnel, was investigated. On the basis of the calculations performed, no impact of the ground on the generated drag force magnitude was found.