Investigation Of Vehicle Spoiler Aerodynamics With Plasma Actuator

Saad Azam, Nurfarah Nabila (2020) Investigation Of Vehicle Spoiler Aerodynamics With Plasma Actuator. Project Report. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma actuator has become the well-known tools in the aerodynamics flow control applications. There are many number of research that utilized the used of DBD plasma actuator because of its unique characteristics. As for instances, DBD plasma actuator is a promising tools that have no moving parts as it only involves in ionization of flow stream, fast reaction, flexible and amazingly low in mass. The used of DBD plasma actuator has been applied for any type of flow control such as on airfoil, flow control around cylinder or bluff body, deferring flow separation on turbine blades and improving aerodynamics performance especially in automotive industry. Basically the design of spoiler is upside down of airfoil. Hence, this study manages the improvement of aerodynamics performance on vehicle spoiler where the design is constructed from NACA 4418 airfoil. The spoiler is DBD plasma actuator is attached and mounted on the lower part at the leading edge of the spoiler to allow the tools to delay the separation of flow that usually occurs at the leading edge of a body profile. Lift coefficient CL, drag coefficient CD and flow visualization were conducted on the case without plasma actuator using ANSYS FLUENT software at varying angle of attack. Case with plasma actuator was conducted using wind tunnel to evaluate the drag coefficient only due to limitations of equipment. A study on a NACA 4418 is performed to improve its aerodynamic performance particularly focused drag coefficient, CD only. The data collected from experimental was compared for base case (DBD plasma actuator OFF) and actuation case (DBD plasma actuator ON). The simulation works were performed in ANSYS FLUENT at Reynolds Number (Re) of 0.93 x 105 with external flow velocity of 10m/s. The spoiler with 132mm chord length and 183mm span length was tested with varying angle of attack to study the downforce produce by the spoiler based on the plotted of lift coefficient vs the angle of attack. The drag coefficient and flow visualization were also collected using simulation without the implementation of DBD plasma actuator (base case). The experimental works were performed in the wind tunnel test section with flow velocity of 10m/s. The DBD plasma actuator was mounted on the NACA 4418 spoiler model at x/c = 0.025, where c was the chord length while x is the vertical distance measured from the leading edge of the spoiler model. The configuration of DBD plasma actuators comprises of two electrodes with 12mm width and 120

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