Fundamental investigation of road vehicle aerodynamics

The present investigation focuses on the aerodynamics of pickup trucks and SUVs. The flow about generic pickup truck and SUV models and a much simpler bluff body model known as the Square Back (SB) model has been documented experimentally. The main objective of the present research is to gain a better understanding of the pickup truck and SUV aerodynamics through mean and unsteady pressure measurements as well as detailed flow field measurements using PIV. The mean pressure results of the pickup truck show that the pressure outside the tailgate is higher than inside the tailgate suggesting that the tailgate reduces aerodynamic drag. Pressure fluctuation spectra indicate a spectral peak at a Strouhal number of ∼0.094 for the SB model and ∼0.07 for the SUV and pickup truck models. Velocity field measurements in horizontal planes behind the SUV and SB models show a similar flow pattern characterized by a recirculation region at the base of the model with length about 1.15 times the width of the model. The flow in the symmetry plane varies considerably between models. For the SUV there is strong upwash while for the pickup truck, there is a recirculation region inside the bed and a strong downwash behind the tailgate. For the present pickup truck model the bed recirculation region is bounded by a shear layer which does not interact directly with the tailgate. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) analysis was applied to the PIV data at selected planes in order to identify the most energetic structures in the wake of these models. It is shown that the first two modes contain almost 20% of the total fluctuation energy while 70% of energy is captured by the first twenty modes. When the most energetic modes were used in reconstruction of the flow field in the wake of SB and SUV, flapping and breathing like motions resulted. For the pickup truck it is shown that some modes capture the energy in the underbody shear layer while other modes seem to contribute more to the cab shear layer. It is found that the first two modes indicate a wavy motion of the underbody flow when used in reconstruction of the flow field.