Trend Predictions in Effect of Spoilers for a Mini Car: A Low Cost Solution

Most of the CFD analysis on car aerodynamics published so far is being carried out with high-end workstations and many days of computation time, which only few laboratories in the world can afford to. In developing economies like India, many car users use large number of add-on devices, which can have significant impact on the fuel consumption, which they are not aware of. The focus of the present paper is to expose such aspects using a simple personal computer with few hours of computational time, which must be economical. A most popular mini-car on Indian roads is taken for analysis. A two dimensional CFD analysis using commercial finite element based CFD software is used. The analysis has revealed that position and size of front and rear spoilers have significant impact on Lift i.e. vehicle stability and moderate impact on Drag i.e. Fuel consumption. The effect of speed on different geometries is studied and the variations are found to be linear.