Aerodynamics has been an important aspect of the automotive industry for decades with the wheels being a notable contributing factor. They are responsible for up to 25% of the drag in the case of a general passenger car and up to 30%-50% for an open-wheeled race car.
In this research, the aerodynamic characteristics of an isolated rotating wheel in contact with the ground will be investigated using RANS simulations. Open-source software OpenFOAM is used for the simulations and the mesh is generated using cfMesh. The wheel geometry used in this work is the "Fackrell A2" and the contact region is modelled using the step size approach.
Firstly, the sensitivity of the step size, mesh fineness and domain size is assessed for an unyawed wheel and the k −ω SST, Realizable k − ε and Spalart-Allmaras are tested. Among these models, the Realizable k −ε model is chosen to investigate the effect of yaw and Reynolds number. The yaw is investigated up to 10° in increments of 2° and the Reynolds number effect is investigated for the Reynolds number range of 10 000 — 1 000 000.
The results show that yawing the wheel yields a fairly linear increase in the drag coefficient and the side force coefficient. Furthermore, only a significant increase of the lift coefficient is observed when going from a yaw of 4° to 6°. Moreover, the wake becomes asymmetric with increasing yaw. The vortex at the leeside on the ground becomes bigger while the vortex at the windward side becomes smaller. Additionally, a new vortex in the upper part of the wake further downstream is formed and the wake becomes shorter.
Increasing the Reynolds number, the value of the drag coefficient decreases and of the lift coefficient stays approximately the same. Moreover, the Reynolds number seems to affect the pressure peaks upstream and downstream of the contact patch. A lower value results in larger magnitude peaks. Finally, in the investigated Reynolds number range the wake structures are the same. However, the wake is bigger when the Reynolds number is smaller and asymmetry was observed in the wake for ReD = 1 000 000, which can be caused by the asymmetry of the wheel.