Sunroof Buffeting Vorticity Simulation, With Bar

A simulation of sunroof buffeting I did as part of my Fluid Mechanics coursework.

Buffeting is what we call those annoying pressure variations that happen in a lot of cars if you open one of the windows (or the sunroof) and drive at a relatively low speed. It can get very annoying very quickly, so it's one of the things that auto makers try to reduce. That's what the little pop-up deflector thing at the edge of the sunroof is for, usually.

Vorticity is a measure of how much air is spinning around. This lets us see where the vortices are forming so we can come up with things to do to screw up their formation.

In this case, my team stuck a bar in the sunroof opening. This helps to break up the vortices before they get too strong and break the coupling between the resonant frequency of the cabin and the shedding frequency of the vortices off of the roof.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• fluid
• mechanics
• science
• simulation
• aerodynamics
• fluent
• CFD