Effect of Spoiler Design on Hatchback Car

Abstract

The aerodynamic aspects of automobiles have received more interest recently. Detailed knowledge of vehicle aerodynamics is more important to improve fuel efficiency and enhance stability of vehicle at high speed cruising. Additionally it provides improved external aesthetics. There are different ways to improve the aerodynamic performance of a car like using spoilers, air dam, diffuser etc. This paper deals with effect of addition of spoiler on Volkswagen Polo car in terms of coefficient of drag and lift. Main purpose of spoiler is to generate down force or negative lift. More down force is good but at the same time drag produced must be minimum. It is more important to maximize the down force to drag ratio. The VW Polo car was analyzed for two cases namely with and without spoiler. Creo 2.0 was used for modeling and Ansys Fluent 15 was used for CFD analysis. Validation was done with ahmed body. k-ω shear stress transport turbulence model was used for simulation. The results showed the effect of introduction of rear spoiler on drag and lift.

Aerodynamic analysis of car rear spoiler with computational fluid dynamics for different angles and profiles

“…Based on an analysis of a vehicle with and without a spoiler, it was found that spoilers have a significant effect on the performance of a hatchback. As a result of the analysis, the drag coefficient increased by 8.33% with the addition of the spoiler and the lift coefficient decreased by 59.09% with the addition of the spoiler [5]. Improving the aerodynamic performance of the wing section is achieved by increasing the lift force generated around the wing section and reducing the drag force.…”