Author : Manikandan. M, Shiva Prasad U, Ashish Ashok Suvarna, Anuj Bhat B, Vinayak Nair and Gunda Shivakrishna

Fuel efficiency is the prime focus of the present work. Simulations are carried over external aerodynamic body to determine the drag and its coefficient by means of virtual environment with the help of commercial tool. The use of computer software makes it possible to be in time and cost savings. Numerical methods are employed on three-dimensional vehicle structure to resolved body forces. The present work is carried using the ANSYS-CFX and the equations governing fluid flow combined with standard model and solved by using the appropriate boundary conditions. The study results of the aerodynamic analysis of the air flow, pressure distribution and drag force on the vehicle. Few design modifications are made in the form of attachable accessories which have been resulted in reduction of the drag coefficient. These modifications have shown a drag reduction of 14.28% at a speed of 60 km/h with the drag coefficient reduced to 0.336 from 0.392, thereby reducing the fuel consumption allotted to external body by an amount of approximately 14.28%, which means, there is a saving of 2.14L of petrol for every full tank refill.

Keywords: Automotive Aerodynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Drag Coefficient, Drag Reduction, Fuel Consumption, Numerical Analysis, Tata Nano, ANSYS, visualization, environments, drag force, prototype

Article published in International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Sciences 2014, Special Issue-2 (Feb 2014)