Research Fellows
Pavlos Alexias
Early Stage Researcher 4 at Engys IT
The goal is to minimize the drag force on the DrivAer car model. The flow is turbulent and modeled with the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model with wall functions. Even though the flow around a car does not reach a steady state solution, a time-invariant CFD model is used for the simulation. This simplifies the optimization procedure, avoiding barriers and difficulties which arise when we are dealing with unsteady adjoint equations.
Initial (left) and final (right) shape after 8 optimization cycles together with the pressure distribution. Lowering the trunk leads to increased pressure on the rear part of the car which contributes to the reduction of the drag force.