A Study on Aerodynamic Effect of a Generic Car Spoiler Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Abstract

Most of the time, the car normally breaks through the air barrier when a human drives
the vehicle. In an undesired condition where the handling and stability of the car can
deteriorate as a result of tires losing the traction to the road because of lift, it can be
encountered by installing the spoiler. In this research work, the properties of air flow
have been investigated around the spoiler where the value of the drag and lift forces
and its coefficient has been computed. The research is to distinguish the forces acting
on three types of spoiler with a varied angle of attack and subjected to different
velocity. Ansys Fluent is utilised to analyse and simulate a computational fluid
dynamic (CFD) technique. It can be seen the angle of attack and velocity affected the
magnitude of lift and drag force and their coefficient. At velocity = 45 m/s, all spoiler
1, 2 and 3 experienced downforce with lift coefficient at -0.02632, -0.03705 and -
0.08887, respectively. For this kind of spoiler, the adjustment of angle of attack on
spoiler 2 at 10° AOA could be ideal in terms of lift and drag coefficient optimization
based on the Lift over Drag Ratio recorded at 4.56. The best spoiler design should have
the least drag coefficient and considerably higher negative lift coefficient.