Study on Drag Force Acting on Tandem Car Models

Abstract

In order to develop an automatic driving system, it needs to examine the effect of cars in a line on the flow around a car. In the study, the drag force acting on car models was studied where the two car models were arranged linearly at a certain interval in a wind tunnel. Drag force reduction of the leading car model was observed. The slip stream effect was clear only for a very short inter-vehicle distance under Re=1.0x10⁶ and the effect disappeared for the middle distance between car models.