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- An aerobody model (solidworks, step, parasolid) which can be knitted and thickened to at least 10mm (higher is better).
- Lots of patience and something to kill time with as ANSYS loads and solves
CFD Overview
We want to calculate what air particles are doing around our car. Essentially we are looking to build a virtual wind tunnel and shoot air at our car to see how it reacts. To do so we must:
- Geometry: Load our car aerobody CAD and define our wind tunnel dimensions
- Mesh: Build an accurate mesh that represents reality
- Solution: Define parameters to solve
The Process
ANSYS
This is ANSYS workbench. ANSYS's Fluent Module is used to perform the analysis.
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0.1) Right click on geometry to open the Geometry Modeller (not Space Claim).
Geometry
In this step we will load in the car model and build our "wind tunnel". Additionally, since the car is symmetrical, we will slice and simulate with only half the car model and wind tunnel in half. This reduces our calculation time by over 50%!
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1.6) Double click "Mesh" to open Meshing
Meshing
This is the most critical step in the entire process. Building accurate meshes is a massive topic of study (many workshops and tutorials based on only meshing). This tutorial hopes to build basic intuition of proper meshing techniques specifically for vehicle aerodynamics.
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2.6) The mesh is complete. Go back to ANSYS workbench and double click "setup" to begin setting up boundary conditions and solution parameters.
Setup/Solution
3.1) Our computer sucks so keep settings at default and click "ok".
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Post Processing
This stage is where we look at out results. What is possible?
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