Aerodynamic Analysis of Obhi-Mec Unud Bio-Hybrid Electric Vehicle Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract The aerodynamic properties of a vehicle are a factor in vehicle body development, such as the drag force, lift force, and flow pattern that occurs on the vehicle body. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), such as ANSYS Fluent, those properties can be investigated to design and analyze in many applications. Obhi-Mec Unud Bio-Hybrid is one of the electric vehicles developed to support the decarbonization program investigated through the fluid flow phenomenon to evaluate the drag and lift forces. The ANSYS Fluent with a realizable k-epsilon flow model with a pressure-based solver and steady flow was simulated with various vehicle velocities of 30, 40, and 50 km/h. It is found that the increase in vehicle velocity increases the drag and lift forces experienced by the vehicle. These results are due to the flow disturbance phenomena observed around the vehicle body, such as flow stagnation points, boundary layers, flow separation, and wake and vortex formation.