Proceedings of the ASME-JSME-KSME 2019 Joint Fluids Engineering Conference

AJKFLUIDS2019
July 28-August 1, 2019, San Francisco, CA, USA

AJKFLUIDS2019-5130
REVISED DRAFT

AN EVALUATION OF OPEN SOURCE CFD FOR STUDY OF AERODYNAMICS OF

VEHICLE PLATOONING

T.Farid, A.Shakeel and M.Sajid*

* m.sajid@smme.nust.edu.pk
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (SMME),
National University of Science and Technology (NUST),
Islamabad, Pakistan.

ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION

The ever-growing road congestion and safety hazards
induced by conventional highways has inspired the development
of automated highways which provides four key benefits: fuel
economy, environmental protection, road safety and smooth
traffic flow. Vehicle platooning is a vital component of automated
highways which contributes directly to these four benefits with
its sequence of closely spaced leader-follower vehicle
configuration by taking advantage of the ‘slip-stream’ effect to
minimize the aerodynamic drag. Exploratory studies into
platooning parameters, vehicle spacing, speeds and number of
vehicles, have proven to be prohibitive expensive both
computationally and experimentally due to the complexity of
tests and the large number of test cases. In recent years,
OpenFOAM® an independently developed, supported and
documented open-source toolbox has gained popularity by
offering a lower cost alternative to leading commercial CFD
products. This paper summarizes the results from a
computational study of autonomous vehicle platoons and the
capability of OpenFOAM® to substitute leading commercial
CFD solutions currently used to support vehicle aerodynamic
development. This study investigates the aerodynamic
characteristics of a 4-SUV platoon at inter-vehicle distances
ranging from 0.25 to 1 SUV length at a constant speed of 23 m/s.
Trends of the predicted aerodynamic drag coefficients (Cd) are
then compared against experimental data from published
literature as well as the results obtained from a leading
commercial CFD package.
Keywords: Platooning, CFD, OpenFOAM Vehicle
Aerodynamics
Automated highways are the visionary vanguard of urban
transport offering a preferable alternative to conventional
highways which are prone to road congestion [1] and pose safety
hazards [2] to vehicle transportation at high speeds [3] [4] [5]
[6]. There are four driving factors behind this revolution in the
transportation technology [7] [8]: fuel economy, environmental
protection, road safety and smooth traffic flow. One of the key
aspects of automated highways which adds value to these four
areas of its effectiveness and efficiency, is the autonomous
vehicle platooning [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]. At the average
highway speed of 110 km/h [14] the aerodynamic drag is the
major opposition to vehicle’s driving [15]. Vehicle platoons with
their sequence of closely spaced leader-follower vehicle
configuration take advantage of the “slip-stream” effect to
minimize the associated drag force on each vehicle [16]. The
resulting aerodynamically efficient road train requires less
engine output which translates into reduced fuel consumption
[17] [18]. This in turn prevents the emission of an equivalent
amount of greenhouse gases into the environment [19]. The
recent advances in autonomous vehicles coupled with the
internet of things has created tremendous opportunity for
streamlined traffic flows using advanced vehicle platooning
configurations that can attain the speed of up to 200 km/hr while
ensuring safety of passengers and greater fuel economy through
reduction in aerodynamic drag. However, experimental testing
of these configurations on the road at such high speeds is replete
with great risks coupled with high costs. Therefore, the

1 © 2019 by ASME
computational study of the autonomous vehicle platoon is a
viable approach to study their aerodynamic characteristics. 1.1 Computational Domain

Several wind-tunnel tests and computational studies have The vehicle chosen for this study is an SUV which is
been conducted to study the aerodynamic characteristics of light modelled after the Land Rover Discovery 2018 with the
vehicle platoons. Zabat and Michael[20, 21] provided an geometry of the vehicle defeatured to a numerically realizable
experimental results for the dependence of the drag coefficients complexity. The value of important dimensional parameters
for each of the identical vehicles in 2, 3 & 4 General Motors 1991 namely length, width, height and ground clearance of 5 SUVs
Chevrolet Lumina All-Purpose Vehicle (APV) platoon upon are averaged out to define a generic dimension of the SUV. The
separation between vehicles ranging from 0 to 3 vehicle lengths overall scheme for geometric modelling of the SUV is shown in
at 25 m/s [20] and from 0 to 1 vehicle length at 23 m/s [21]. table 1.
They measured that the mean drag on a 4-vehicle platoon at half
a vehicle distance is 38% lower than the non-platoon value, Table 1: Overall scheme for SUV modelling
while for a closer distance of 0.2 vehicle the drag reduction is
44%. Hong and Patrick [22] advanced the work of Zabat and Ground
SUV Length Width Height
Michael on the wind tunnel study of the external aerodynamics Model (mm) (mm) (mm)
Clearance
of two-vehicle platoon by documenting the drag reduction for a (mm)
two-vehicle platoon by an extensive set of full scale experiments
conducted at El Mirage dry lakebed, using two Ford Windstar Land
minivans. Significant CFD study, validated using wind tunnel Rover
4970 2073 1846 220
tests, of aerodynamics of both uniform and non-uniform vehicle Discovery
trains of compact SUV, sedan and van has been conducted by 2018
Schito and Paolo [23] in commercial CFD software named
ANSYS. However, the inter-vehicle distances have not been Ford Eco
4096 1765 1653 160
selected based on the safety of the road-trains of conventional sport 2018
vehicles at velocity of around 30 m/s. The first appreciable
simulation of vehicle platoons in an open-source CFD toolbox, Honda
4605 1820 1675 155
named OpenFLOW, was SUVried out as part of the SARTRE CR-V
Project (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) [24]. In that
BMW X2
simulation, the aerodynamic properties of the 5 different vehicles 4360 1824 1526 182
2016
with a gap of up to 15 meters were studied at 25 m/s. However,
again, the CFD results for closer inter-vehicle spacings were not Audi Q7
explored and analyzed. In this regard, the recent advances in the 2016
5051 1968 1741 203
CFD technology has seen the development of various
commercial CFD packages. Amongst, a multitude of Average 4616 1890 1688 184
commercially available CFD software packages, the well-
established, open-source OpenFOAM® toolbox provides a Overall shape of the SUV is modelled on Land Rover
robust yet lower cost alternative to conventional CFD products Discovery 2018.
in the numerical study of vehicle aerodynamics [25]. Keeping
this in perspective, in this study, we have investigated the
aerodynamic characteristics of a 4-SUV platoon at inter-vehicle Following this, the platoon comprising of 4 SUVs is
distances ranging from 0.25 to 1 SUV length at a constant speed modelled by placing the four identical SUV models in line such
of 23 m/s. The resulting trends of the predicted aerodynamic drag that the SUVs are separated by an inter-vehicle distance ranging
coefficients (Cd ) are then compared against experimental data from 0.25L to 1L. In this research work, the two cases of the
from a bench mark experimentation results [21]. SUV platoon based on inter-vehicle distance of 0.25L and 1L are
studied.
METHODOLOGY The computational domain, representing the volume of
fluid, for simulating the flow around the vehicle was developed
This paper reports the results of a computational study by creating an enclosure around the 4-SUV platoon and
of the external aerodynamics of a 4-SUV platoon for two inter- extracting the fluid domain from the domain originally defined
vehicle distances of 0.25L and 1L, where L is the length of a by the air-tight CAD model that incorporated the SUV bodies.
single SUV. All CFD analysis were executed using a common This extracted enclosure acts as the air domain surrounding the
CFD modelling and simulation best practice as explained in the vehicles. The dimensions of this computational domain are set
following two subsections 3.1 and 3.2. based on the Ahmed Body [26] CFD analysis results. Figure 1
(a) shows the dimension of the computational domain used in
this study while Figure 1(b) shows the mesh.

2 © 2019 by ASME
 (a)

(b)

Figure 1: Computational domain under study (a) 4-SUV platoon and (b) Domain discretization

The computational domain is discretized by weighing the

solution time against the numerically adequate mesh density. In The boundary conditions of the computational domain are
this regard, the meshing parameters are based on the best consistently maintained the same for both the 0.25L and 1L cases
practices in the computational study of the external of aerodynamic study of 4-SUV platoons. The inlet for the
aerodynamics of the SUV with adjustments to reduce the airflow in the domain is subject to a constant air flow velocity of
computational power requirements without compromising on the 23 m/s with a turbulent kinetic energy of 0.24 and turbulent
accuracy of the results. On average, the computational domain omega of 1.7. The top and side walls of the domain are subject
of the 4-SUV platoon is discretized using 25 million volume to symmetry boundary conditions with slip-condition at the wall
mesh elements with a very good orthogonal quality of surface. A symmetry boundary condition is applied to both the
approximately 0.78 and excellent skewness of 0.22. Table 2 top and side walls of the domain. The surface of the SUVs are
summarizes the mesh statistics for both 0.25L and 1L cases of 4- subject to no-slip boundary condition. Similarly, the road, which
SUV platoon respectively. is depicted by the lower wall of the computational domain, is
also subject to no-slip boundary condition. It is important to note
Table 2: Mesh Statistics of 4-SUV platoon with inter-vehicle that static boundary conditions are used on the road and tires
distances of 0.25L and 1L since this study only incorporates static ground cases of the
Inter- Average Average platoon. The outlet that allows the flow to exit to the atmosphere
No. of No of Average
vehicle Aspect Orthogonality
Distance
Elements Nodes
Ratio
Skewness is subject to a constant atmospheric pressure.

0.25L 26971490 7201531 3.1478 0.21825 0.7798 In this study, the three-dimensional, steady-state,
incompressible Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS)
1L 27878616 7371865 3.1116 0.21856 0.77951
equations are used for computational study of external
aerodynamics of 4 SUV platoon for various inter-vehicle
In particular, the meshing of the computational domain is distances using OpenFOAM.
done using consistent parameters for both the 0.25L and 1L inter- The following standard Eqs. (1), (2) were made use of to
vehicle distances of 4-SUV platoon. A fine mesh (of minimum analyze the flow:
cell size smaller than the defeaturing sizes or tolerances) is used
for regions close to the walls (ground surface and vehicle parts) Continuity Equation for incompressible fluid flow:
so as to compute the influence of high velocity gradients in the
∂(ρuj )
wall regions while the remaining domain is covered by coarser =0 (1)
mesh. In addition, the boundary layer effects on the wall regions ∂xj
is captured by employing a boundary layer mesh with 5 first
aspect ratio layers and a growth rate of 1.2. In order to obtain an Momentum Equations for incompressible fluid flow.
accurate flow physics properties in areas of domain where
complex phenomenon’s like separation, wake, recirculation and
vortex formulations take place, a refined mesh using different ∂(ρui uj ) ∂P ∂ ∂u ∂(ρ̅̅̅̅)
u iu j
sizing functions is developed in those regions. Figure 2 shows =− + μ( ) ( ∂xi) − + ρg i (2)
∂xj ∂xi ∂xj j ∂xj
the mesh of the computational domain.

1.1 Mathematical Description where ui, uj and ūi′, ūj′ - mean and fluctuating velocity
components (m/s) in corresponding directions respectively, P -

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pressure (N/m2), μ - dynamic viscosity (Ns/m2), ρ - density
(kg/m3) and gi - acceleration due to gravity (m/s2).

The RANS turbulence model utilized in this study is the

Mentor’s k–ω SST model [27] which ensures a low
computational cost by employing Boussinesq hypothesis. This
model activates the standard k–ω model in the inner region of
the boundary layer and the standard k–ϵ model in the outer
region. The transport effects of the shear stresses are also
captured by k–ω SST model by using a modified turbulent
viscosity equation. It is worth mentioning that the mathematical
approach for the computation of the turbulent viscosity in the k– FIGURE 2: Grid independence study
ω SST model allows the model to be more robust and accurate
for flows with adverse pressure gradients and separation and Pressure distributions across the computational domain
reattachment as compared to those in the standard case. for inter-vehicle spacing of 0.25L, obtained from the numerical
simulation is depicted in Figure 3 (top). Considering maximum
The governing RANS equations are discretized using the pressure values, the bumper of the first SUV is in contact with
first-order spatially accurate schemes within the framework of most of the streamlines head on so, owing to the “no-slip
the finite volume method (FVM). The SIMPLE algorithm is used condition” at vehicle body, the velocity at the exact surface of
for pressure-velocity coupling of the Navier-Stokes equations the SUV bumper is approximately zero which will reciprocate as
and the simpleFOAM solver of the open-source CFD tool, a very high pressure. As we move further from the surface of the
OpenFOAMv1812 run on a 3.2 GHz Xenon processor with a SUV, the pressure decreases with the increase in the velocity,
RAM of 24 GB, is used for solving the governing equations. hence giving a variable color display that shows a trend of
These RANS simulations are run on 6 processors for a total of decreasing pressure values. Considering the regions subject to
1000 iterations to ensure that the residuals reach the tolerance minimum pressure values, shown in blue color at the sharp edges
limits set for the convergence of the solution within an optimum of vehicle geometry (such as the side window junction of the
time and cost. On average, the combined meshing and simulation windshield, the top surface and under the SUV), the velocity of
time for each case is 19 hours. The drag coefficient values of the streamlines is extremely high thus resulting in low pressure.
each vehicle is monitored during the computation, and the Figure 3 (bottom) shows the pressure distribution
solution is assumed to be converged when the drag coefficients around the platoon. Maximum values of pressure are observed in
exhibit either a repeatable behavior or show negligible change regions where the flow is normal to the SUV surface. Such
with each successive iteration. The simulations are then treated regions mostly comprises of the frontal bumper of the SUVs. The
as converged, as per this criteria, before reaching the above reason for high pressure is the very small velocity value at that
mentioned iteration number. region. Minimum pressure values are observed around the sharp
For the grid independence study, the simulation of a 4 SUV
platoon (for inter-vehicle distance of 0.25L) was performed at
varying mesh coarseness ranging from 20.5 million elements to
26.9 million elements. Results of the grid independence study
are shown in Figure 2. The numerical error beyond 60 iterations
showed negligible variation with change in mesh density thereby
establishing the credibility of the CFD results as grid
independent. Therefore, the mesh density for this work was not
increased beyond 26.9 million as no considerable reduction in
the numerical error was expected for the increase in mesh
density.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

FIGURE 3: Close-up view of pressure contours for 4-SUV
The numerical results obtained from the simulation are platoon at inter- SUV distance of 0.25L (top) and 1L
post-processed using the paraFOAM post-processing tool in (bottom)
OpenFOAM.

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 FIGURE 4: Close-up view of velocity vector and vorticity
magnitude distribution for 4-suv platoon at inter- SUV distance
of 0.25L (top) and 1L (bottom)

corners of the SUV and beneath the SUV’s surface as velocity at

those regions has a large value.
Figure 4 shows the values of two variables
simultaneously: the color distributions shows vorticity values
while the black colored arrows displays the magnitude and the
direction of air velocity. When the fluid moves over the surface
of the SUV, it develops a boundary layer. The value of velocity
of fluid varies inside the boundary layer from zero at the surface FIGURE 5: Close-up view of air velocity streamlines for 4-suv
of the SUV to a maximum value at the end of the boundary layer. platoon at inter- SUV distance of 0.25L (top) and 1L (bottom)
At the rear end of each SUV, the boundary layer separates from
greatest while the slipstream effect of each preceding SUV
its surface causing a low pressure wake region at the back of the
deceases. This fluid phenomenon, highlighted in the figure 4,
SUV. This can be observed in both the cases, that is the 0.25L
advocates the decrease in overall drag of the 4-SUV platoon as
and 1L case. The velocity vectors in the wake region of each
compared to that of a single SUV.
SUV show the formation of vortices which is also highlighted by
Figure 5 (top) shows the behavior of the streamlines
the large magnitude of vorticity in that region. It is interesting to
around the platoon with inter-vehicle spacing of 0.25L. The
observe that the wake region, quantified by the vorticity
streamlines are generated by a vertically placed line source
magnitude, decreases with the distance along the platoon which
positioned at the center of the frontal projection of the SUV.
means that the slip stream effect of the leading SUV is the

FIGURE 6: Comparison of the experimental and CFD results for the study of the external aerodynamics of 4-SUV platoon for inter-
vehicle distances of 0.25L and 1L

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From the color of the streamlines, it is observable that there is a
change in magnitude of the velocity around the edges of the SUV.
Furthermore, the turbulence can also be observed at the back of
the first SUV. The lower surface shows the velocity values just
above the road which is equal to the velocity of the SUV.
Similarly, the Figure 5 (bottom) shows the velocity streamlines
for 4-SUV platoon with inter-vehicle distance of 1L. The
streamlines are produced from a vertical line source that is
positioned at the center of the frontal area. The wavy motion of
the streamlines is observed especially towards the back end of
the platoon where the turbulent flow occurs along with flow
separation for the formation of the wake region. Different values
of velocity of the streamlines is also observed by the display of
different colors. In addition, a large increase in velocity values is
also observed around the edges of the SUV’s surface.
Figures 6 demonstrates the comparison of the results of the
numerical simulation with the experimental results from the
wind tunnel test with the inter-vehicle distances of 0.25L and 1L
for 4-SUV platoon respectively. According to numerical results,
in case of inter-vehicle distance of 0.25L in 4-SUV platoon,
maximum normalized drag coefficient is attained by the last
SUV because of the enormous wake region behind it. The second
SUV has the second largest coefficient of drag. Drag coefficient
of the third SUV falls in the third place and lastly comes the first
SUV with a drag coefficient of 0.396. A High variation of
normalized drag coefficient is observed due to variable level of
wake region for each SUV. The experimental data differs slightly
from our numerical results as according to that, the fourth SUV
should have the highest drag coefficient, followed by the first
SUV, then the second one and finally the third SUV. In case of
inter-vehicle distance of 1L in 4-SUV platoon, the graphical
analysis of the data shows us that the maximum normalized drag
coefficient is attained by the last SUV while the second SUV has
the second largest normalized drag coefficient. This is followed
by the first SUV and finally the third SUV. All these values are
approximately equal to one another because of the
approximately same magnitude of wake region behind each
SUV. On the other hand, the experimental data shows a slight
discrepancy in the results when compared to the CFD results.
According to the wind-tunnel test results, the first SUV should
have the highest normalized drag coefficient followed by the
second SUV then the third one and finally last SUV in the
platoon.
CONCLUSION
Autonomous Vehicle platooning is the hallmark of future
transportation owing to its potential for fuel consumption
savings as well as passenger safety in addition to eco-friendly
travel that it guarantees. In this regard, we have reported the
results of a computational study of the external aerodynamics of
a 4-SUV platoon for two inter-vehicle distances of 0.25L and 1L.
The close approximation of the experimental results by the
numerical simulation results in this CFD study establishes the
viability of OpenFOAM® toolbox as a robust yet lower cost
alternative to conventional CFD products for the study of
external aerodynamic of vehicle platoons.
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