Investigation of wheelhouse shapes on the aerodynamic characteristics of a generic car model

As vehicle speed increases, the aerodynamic drag reduction becomes increasingly significant. The aim of this paper is to find out the effects of the wheelhouse shapes on the aerodynamics of an Ahmed body with a 35 slant angle. In this paper, based on the detached-eddy simulation method, the effects of the three classic different wheelhouse on the aerodynamic performance and near wake of the Ahmed body are presented. The mesh resolution and methodology are validated against the published test results. The results show that the front wheelhouse has a significant impact on the aerodynamic performance of the Ahmed body, leading to different aerodynamic drag forces and flow fields. Enlarging the wheelhouse cavity volume could result in a gradual increase in aerodynamic drag coefficients, the ratio of the wheelhouse cavity volume increased by 2.9% and 9.8%, the drag coefficients increased by 2.5% and 4.5% respectively. The increase in aerodynamic drag was primarily caused by flow separation in the large cavity volume wheelhouse.