t e c h n o l o g y TESTING

JLR’s REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

TO VEHICLE WADE TESTING
The ability of a car to maintain its stability and functionality in flooded roads, referred to as vehicle wading, is cru-
cial. Driving through water is detrimental to underbody components, bumper cover, electronic circuits, air intake
(causing hydro-lock) and the engine. All cars are designed with wading capability, but the ability to wade through
different depths of water, varies based on the design. In this article, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) talks about their rev-
olutionary use of numerical simulation in vehicle wading testing, leading to better wading performance.

62 www.autotechreview.com
 A u t h o rs
DR.-ING. PRASHANT KHAPANE
is Manager, Durability & Reliability
CAE at Jaguar & Land Rover in Warwick
(United Kingdom).
PRASHANTH SHANKARA
is Technical Marketing Engineer at
CD-adapco in Detroit (United States).
Uday Ramchandra Ganeshwade
is Team Leader CFD at Tata
Technologies in Pune (India).
autotechreview S ep t e mb e r 2 015
Unlike the aerodynamic design of the
vehicle body where numerical simulation
plays a major role, vehicle wade testing is
still the only design procedure to analyse
and establish wade performance. Wading
tests involve driving the car through dif-
ferent depths of car at different speeds.
Often, the underbody design and place-
ment of components and the structural
design of the chassis has already been
decided before wading tests commence
and numerical simulation is not used.
This leads to late detection of failure
modes, expensive design changes, and
increased cost & time for testing. As a
result, this affects the programme timing.
An established Computer Aided Engi-
neering (CAE) process for vehicle wade
testing can identify failure modes at an
earlier stage, provide insight into the
structural integrity of underbody compo-
nents, and analyse multiple designs with
confidence, leading to testing of an opti-
mum design. Numerical simulation helps
in savings enormous amount of cost and
time, and also improves wading capability
for the vehicle and structural integrity of
the components.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT
SIMULATION TOOL
The use of numerical simulation for vehi-
cle wading testing is at a nascent stage in
production environments, and hence
there is dearth of literature on best-prac-
tices and the use of CAE in vehicle wad-
ing. In fact, wade testing is still the only
procedure used here. The work done by
1 Mid-plane cross section of Overset Mesh and domain
Vo lum e 4 | I s su e 9
Zheng, et al [1] is the major reference for
JLR’s development of the CAE process.
Aside from this, JLR is the first OEM to
publish literature on this topic. The need
for this process was to understand the
failure modes of under-body components
early in the design stage and their effect
on the vehicle performance and integrity.
The current testing procedure at JLR
involves driving the vehicle over a ramp
into a wading trough, and using another
ramp to exit the trough. Testing is done
for different speeds and water depths.
Various combinations of speed and depth
produce differing behaviours in stability,
splash pattern and bow wave formation in
front of the vehicle. With numerical simu-
lation, JLR aims to understand these dif-
ferent behaviours and optimise the under-
body design.
With no historic literature or procedure
available, JLR’s first challenge was to
identify a computational tool capable of
accurately modelling the motion of a vehi-
cle through water. STAR-CCM+ was one
of the contenders, in addition to a
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH)
code and LS- DYNA, another popular
Navier-Stokes based commercial code.
The CAE process needed to accurately
simulate the transient pressure forces on
the under-body components due to the
motion of the vehicle and water relative
to each other. To accurately identify fail-
ure modes, the tool needed to handle
modelling of the motion of the vehicle in
a fully-transient analysis. After careful
consideration of the tools, STAR-CCM+
was the clear winner due to its proven
use in the automotive industry, overset
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2 Simulation result (Right) at immersion depth of 180 mm and speed of 1.85 m/s compared to test (Left)

mesh capability to model motion and a

well validated Volume of Fluid (VOF)
model to capture the air-water interface
during wading.
The motion modelling needed to be
robust and be as close to the test scenario
as possible. The Overset mesh capability
made STAR-CCM+ the clear winner. This
technique involves two different mesh
domains, one for the vehicle (overset
region) and one for the background
domain. This Chimera meshing technique
will cut out the region of the background
grid overlapping with the overset region,
leaving the bordering cells (acceptor cells) 3 Comparison of peak pressure data (in mm of H2O) at sensor locations for 180 mm, 1.85 m/s
between the two regions, which can com-
municate with each other through inter-
polation. This enables handling of large
motions in a robust, accurate manner.

VALIDATING THE OVERSET MESH

Before applying the overset mesh

approach to the vehicle wading simula-
tion, it was imperative to validate this
methodology for modelling an object
motion into water. For this purpose, JLR
scaled down one of their vehicles into a
rectangular block to be tested in a towing
tank. Six pressure sensors were placed
on the block in testing to gather transient
pressure data, which can be compared
with the CFD results to validate the
numerical approach. The box in test was
1,000 mm x 400 mm x 500 mm and tests
were at water depths of 50 mm, 100 mm
and 180 mm, at speeds of 0.87 m/s and
1.86 m/s.
1 shows the overset mesh with hexa- 4 Sensor locations (white marks) on the vehicle undertray

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t e c h n o l o g y TESTING
hedral cells around the block in STAR-
CCM+. The SST k-omega turbulence
model in STAR-CCM+, well-validated in
the marine industry, was used with the
VOF model to capture the air-water inter-
face. Pressure monitors were set-up in the
simulation at the exact locations as the six
pressure sensors. 2 shows the rectangular
block at an immersion depth of 180 mm
and speed of 1.85 m/s in both the towing
tank and simulation.
This shows good comparison of the
water level around the block between
test and CFD. In 3, the correlation of
peak pressure data (in mm of H2O)
between test and simulation at the six
sensor locations is represented for 180
mm and 1.85 m/s. The difference
between simulation and test results for
all scenarios was within 10 %, which
was deemed acceptable. In addition, the
water level height comparison between
CFD (0.158 m) and test (0.16 m) was
also satisfactory establishing the validity
of this simulation method.
VEHICLE TESTING
With confidence in the simulation strat-
egy established, JLR moved to the vehicle
wading testing and modelling. A Jaguar
XJ was used for the wading tests, con-
ducted in the wading trough at the Mill-
brook Vehicle Proving Ground in Bedford-
shire. Sixteen waterproof pressure trans-
ducers were fitted on the underside panels
4 and bumpers. Protective stainless steel
meshes protected the sensing diaphragm.
The data acquisition and signal condition-
ing system were set up in the rear of the
vehicle, with shielded electrical signal
66
wires to minimise contamination of test
data. Different speeds and wading depths
were tested. The vehicle started from
standstill and data acquisition started
before the vehicle entered the water and
stopped when it came to a standstill.
CFD MODELING OF VEHICLE WADING
For accurate modelling of the test environ-
ment, a CAD representation of the vehicle
and the wading trough was built and
cleaned in Hypermesh and ANSA and
brought into STAR-CCM+. The vehicle
was aligned with the ramp entry and the
wheels were floating to enable rotation 5.
A rectangular domain around the vehicle
was created to be the overset region,
which moves and the rest of the domain
was modelled as the static background
region. The cool packs (intercooler, con-
denser and radiator) were modelled as
separate domains to solve for porous
6 Comparison of transient pressure data in sensor 2 (undertray) at 450 mm, 1.944 m/s
5 Motion definition of vehicle
and wheels and initial water in
STAR-CCM+
physics along with normal physics and
were connected to other regions by inter-
nal interfaces through which data interpo-
lation takes place. A hexahedral trimmed
mesh was automatically generated with
proper refinement around the cool packs,
water region and the motion path of the
vehicle. The final mesh count was around
40 mn cells.
The Segregated Implicit Unsteady
solver was used to resolve the flow field
and the VOF model solves for the mul-
tiphase flow physics. Turbulence is mod-
elled using the SST k-omega model and
experimental data supplied the inertial
and viscous resistance coefficients for the
porous flow physics. A velocity inlet
boundary condition was chosen at the
domain inlet and the side and upper faces
were designated as pressure outlets. A
rotating (while entering trough) and trans-
lating motion were prescribed for the
vehicle to model test conditions and tan-
gential velocity boundary conditions is
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t e c h n o l o g y TESTING
7 Bow shock from the STAR-CCM+ simulation
given at the wheels using local rotation
rate. Sixteen pressure monitors were set-
up in the simulation at the same locations
as the test to compare the results.
6 shows the comparison of transient
pressure data in sensor 2 (undertray)
between CFD and testing at 450 mm and
1.944 m/s. The transient pressure data
from CFD in all scenarios was within
acceptable limits in comparison to test
data, especially on stiff components like
the undertray. In flexible components
such as aero flips, the numerical results
were significantly higher compared to test
data. This is to be expected since these
were modelled as rigid bodies in simula-
tion, while in testing, the deflection from
loading leads to reduced pressures. The
front bow wave structure also corre-
sponded well between CFD and experi-
mental results, 7.
One of the benefits of using STAR-
8 Von Mises stresses on undertray at T=0.675 sec
68
CCM+ is the fully coupled, two-way, co-
simulation capability with Abaqus, a
leading finite element analysis (FEA)
structural solver from SIMULIA. Pressure
data from STAR-CCM+ was mapped at
various time intervals to Abaqus and the
loads at various fixtures and high stress
areas were obtained. This information is
crucial in assisting the underbody design
at an early stage. JLR modelled one-way
coupling between the fluid and structure
but future work will model two-way cou-
pling. The Von Mises stresses on the
undertray at a time step of 0.675 s from
Abaqus are seen in 8.
A full multi-physics procedure is being
validated currently on a simplified model
using STAR-CCM+ and Simpack, a multi
body simulation (MBS) software using a
coupling tool called Multi physics Code
Coupling Interface (MpCCI). This will
allow the forces and torques from STAR-
CCM+ to be transferred to Simpack to
calculate jumping behaviour, when the
vehicle enters water. Simpack then trans-
fers the corresponding velocities back dur-
ing jumping behaviour to STAR-CCM+.
A VISIONARY APPROACH
JLR has developed a revolutionary process
for vehicle wade testing using numerical
simulation, the first published work of its
kind among OEMs. The overset mesh
capability of STAR-CCM+ and advanced
physics models have helped JLR success-
fully integrate virtual testing into its pro-
cess, giving better insight into the under-
body component loading and potential
failure modes at an earlier stage. Future
work involving FSI and MBS in addition
to CFD will result in an accurate virtual
test bed for wade testing. The benefits are
many, including, early detection of failure
modes, ability to investigate multiple
designs, reduced cost of testing, lesser
delays in programme timing and better
wading capability.
REFERENCE:
[1] Zheng, Xin., Qiao, Xin., Kong, Fanhua., “Vehi-
cle Wading Simulation with STAR-CCM+,” present-
ed at FISITA World Automotive Congress, SAE Chi-
na, Beijing, 2012.
Note: Wading CAE is a patented CAE
technique and has shaped the design of
many JLR products.
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