Autostudi Srl of Turin
is an automotive engineering and styling company. We
needed insight into the functionality of our styling
and engineering concept for a 3-wheel motorscooter
named A-TRIX (Fig.1). The challenge of modeling a complex
shape was further complicated by the short time available – only
one week from the CAS model (Computer Aided Styling
format) to the final results! The drag and lift coefficients
for a realistic model of the motorscooter were required
before the physical prototype could be built and these
details were needed quickly in order to constrain the
styling to within acceptable design parameters.
Starting with a CAS model (ALIAS
format) converted into CAD (Catia4), CD-adapco’s
CAD reader/cleaner pro-surf was able to import the
styling surfaces and produce a perfectly closed triangulated
surface with very few manual operations. No intermediate
quality loss with IGES formats was incurred. No oversimplification
of the geometry occured, a result of Autostudi’s
and CD-adapco’s shared approach to realistic
geometric modeling. The surface was then fed into
the es-aero and the final computational mesh was
available in a few hours.
A mesh with more than 90% pure
hexahedral elements was available for the parallel
solver. The computations were run on a Linux PC with
dual CPU and 2GB of RAM. We focused on studying the
velocity and pressure fields and the aeroacoustic
sources.
In addition to generating color
plots, which helped the designer gain insight into
the underlying physics (Fig. 2), computed performance
coefficients were needed. These were automatically
calculated by the es-aero expert tool working as
an object-oriented post-processor. A drag coefficient
of 0.48 for a frontal area of 0.95 m2 and a lift
coefficient of –0.022 (a downforce) were computed
long before the physical prototype was available.
Those parameters were considered very good and the
final design was validated by the es-aero calculations.
In this manner, es-aero facilitates
our daily real design processes including interaction
with our CAS-CAD system and the generation of computational
models that do not need investments in expensive
hardware resources. In summary, our engineers are
now used to working in a "Virtual wind tunnel" design
environment.
"Virtual flows that
become real by giving us solutions ready for the
market; CD-adapco’s tools are the key to
becoming
a competitive motorcycle designer".
This is Autostudi’s conclusion
on our successful engineering and business project.
In the near future we will move on to studying the
thermo-fluid dynamics of the motorcycle headlights
and other motorcycle components.
For further information, please
do not hesitate to contact Autostudi at autostudi@autostudi.it,
or CD-adapco at:
info@it.cd-adapco.com
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