Hello Autodesk CFD Community,
I am new to Autodesk CFD and have previously only worked with ANSYS Fluent, so I would appreciate guidance on the appropriate workflow for adding rotating wheels when these are in contact with the ground.
I am running an external aerodynamic simulation of a full-scale heavy-duty multi-axle road vehicle in a CAD-built wind tunnel domain. The wind tunnel/enclosure was created in CAD instead of using the automatic External Volume tool because I wanted better control of the wheel-road interaction (see image).
The current simulation setup is:
- CAD-built wind tunnel / external flow domain
- Full-scale multi-axle vehicle model
- Moving ground enabled
- Wheels are currently stationary
- Tyres were trimmed at the bottom to emulate a contact patch / contact-step type geometry
- The trimmed tyre face is coincident with the ground plane
- K-omega SST turbulence model
- No local mesh sizing or local mesh refinement was used in the first run
- The objective of the first run was only to confirm that the geometry, mesh, and solver setup were stable
The simulation ran successfully without solver issues.
So my main objective now is to implement wheel rotation correctly without introducing avoidable boundary-condition or meshing errors.
For the next run, I want to add rotating wheels, and I would like to confirm the correct Autodesk CFD method before proceeding.
- What is the recommended workflow for applying rotating wheel boundary conditions in an external vehicle aero simulation with moving ground?
- Should I apply Rotational Velocity directly to the tyre/wheel surfaces, or is there a better Autodesk CFD-specific approach?
- Since the tires have a trimmed/flattened contact patch face coincident with the moving ground, should that trimmed face be excluded from the rotating wall condition?
- If the tyre curved surface rotates but the contact patch/trimmed face should remain stationary, what is the best way to separate and assign those faces in Autodesk CFD?
- For a multi-axle vehicle, should each wheel receive its own rotational wall boundary condition with its own rotation axis, or can this be grouped if the wheels share the same radius and angular velocity?
Any step-by-step guidance would be appreciated.
Thank you for your time,
Carlos.
