車両前端形状とエンジン冷却風による空力特性

抄録

The purpose of this research is to experimentally investigate how increase of the air inlet area of the engine cooling air affects the aerodynamic characteristics depending on the shape of the front-end of the vehicle body. A simplified 1/5 scale car model was used with reproduction of the engine compartment. In past researches, we used a rectangular front-end model, and in this research we used a round front-end model with a shape closer to the actual vehicle. In the wind-tunnel experiments, the moving-belt ground board were used to capture ground effects. The experiment was conducted at a wind speed and a moving belt speed of 20 m/s. As a result, the drag force of the round model was lower than that of the rectangular model, but the lift was not reduced.