Assessment of RANS and DES methods for realistic automotive models

This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of RANS and DES models for the Ahmed car body and a realistic automotive vehicle; the DrivAer model. A variety of RANS models, from the 1-equation Spalart Allmaras model to a low-Reynolds number Reynolds Stress model have shown an inability to consistently correctly capture the flow field for both the Ahmed car body and DrivAer model, with the under-prediction of the turbulence in the initial separated shear layer found as a key deficiency. It has been shown that the use of a hybrid RANS-LES model (in this case, Detached Eddy Simulation) offers an advantage over RANS models in terms of the force coefficients, and general flow field for both the Ahmed car body and the DrivAer model. However, for both cases even at the finest mesh level hybrid RANS-LES methods still exhibited inaccuracies. Suggestions are made on possible improvements, in particular on the use of embedded LES with synthetic turbulence generation. Finally the computational cost of each approach is compared, which shows that whilst hybrid RANS-LES offer a clear benefit over RANS models for automotive relevant flows they do so at a much increased cost. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.