CAE Simulation of Full Vehicle Wind Noise and other CFD Phenomena

This project, led by Paul Bemis of Fluent Inc., was awarded 166,000 hours to use high performance computing resources together with an off the shelf engineering simulation software product in use at GM today (FLUENT) to illustrate the competitive benefits of large scale engineering simulation early in the design phase of automotive production. This project will explore the use of FLUENT software to perform emerging computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and thermal calculations on high-end parallel-processing computers in order to determine the hardware resources and software system behavior required to deliver results in time frames that significantly impact General Motors’ Global Vehicle Development Process (GVDP). Five specific application areas will be investigated: (1) Full-vehicle open-sunroof wind buffeting calculations. (2) Full-vehicle transient thermal calculations. (3) Simulations of semi-trucks passing stationary vehicles with raised hoods. (4) Vehicle underhood buoyancy convection airflow and thermal simulations. (5) Vehicle component and sub-assembly fluid immersion and drainage calculations.