Smarter Aerodynamics - Aerodynamic improvement of Chalmers’ Shell Eco-marathon car Smarter

Sammanfattning: Students at Chalmers have participated in the UrbanConcept class in the Shell Ecomarathoncompetition since 2009. The aim of the competition is to build and drivea car as far as possible with an amount of energy equivalent to 1 litre of petrol.Chalmers current car is called Smarter and has been manufactured at the universitycampus, meaning that there were some limitations regarding manufacturingpossibilities. Therefore, a simple body design was chosen, consisting of flat platesmade out of plastic material. This design was assumed to result in poor aerodynamicproperties, which gave rise to this Bachelors thesis.The purpose of this thesis was to improve the aerodynamic properties of the car andthereby lower the air drag, without compromising the possibility of manufacturingit at Chalmers. This has been done through examining the properties of the originaldesign with flow simulations in STAR-CCM+ and in a following design process improvethe design from an aerodynamic perspective. Several designs were presentedduring the design process and the best designs were selected and presented in a finaldesign.The final design has a drag coefficient of about 34% of the coefficient for the originaldesign, which will contribute to a better fuel efficiency.