Help needed with modeling vortex generators on car roof

Project Support
1

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working on a school project where I’m using SimScale to analyze the aerodynamics of a car. The goal is to investigate how different design elements – including vortex generators – affect the airflow and drag on the vehicle.

I’m trying to add small vortex generators to the roof of the car, but I’m having trouble modeling them correctly. Every time I try to create or import them, I either get geometry errors (like bad faces or bad topology) or the generators don’t merge properly with the car body. I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to fix it in Blender and FreeCAD, but it’s proving quite difficult.

If anyone here has experience with this and would be willing to help by modeling the vortex generators for me (or advising on the best way to do it), I’d really appreciate it!

Here is a link to my SimScale project:

Thanks in advance for any help!
Best regards,
Malthe

2

Hey @Malthe_Larsen ,

I can see you were able to run simulations with vortex generators on the roof already.

Some tips however:

The best way would be to design it as a separate part in whichever CAD tool you use and then importing the assembly into SimScale and then creating a flow region.

What you can also do is have all the VGs ( vortex generators) separately imported into SimScale to test only the flow around them in few runs, and use the best one then along with the entire car to save simulation effort. You can use the Add CAD feature to add any CAD (any of the VGs) in the project to another CAD (your car) in the project. You can also use Boolean operations within SimScale to union two solids, for example.

Let us know if you need more support with your project!

Best,
Satvik