As one of the most crucial problems that the World experiences, the population increase has reached a point where transportation becomes more challenging each day. As a result, vehicle manufacturers started to search for alternative ways for daily transportation. Developed for the urban transportation requirements only, vehicles categorised under the general term of microcar offer an appropriate solution for that issue on account of their minimalistic design philosophy. Their role in future transportation is considered to play a crucial role in the solution of global transportation problem, by virtue of their feasibility in inner-city use. The vehicle is responsible for a possible long driving range within a given battery capacity. The accomplishment of this task is dependent on the state of overcoming the driving resistances with less effort as possible that act on the vehicle during the motion. In the scope of this paper, air drag resistance was taken into account, which is dependent on the aerodynamic profile of the vehicle that is identical for each vehicle. Aerodynamic analysis for an urban electric microcar is summarised as a part of its conceptual design. Firstly, a bodywork was created based on the design limitations, which are bounded by the interior design volume and driving ergonomics. Then, the bodywork was carried out to a computational fluid dynamics analysis with the use of ANSYS Fluent 18.2®, and value for the coefficient of drag was obtained. Various design improvements were proposed for the vehicle bodywork with the aim of air drag coefficient reduction.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Automobile Aerodynamics, CFD, Vehicle Design, Electric Vehicles, Microcar, Light Quadricycle, Vehicle Body
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