Aerodynamic Development of DNV GL Fuel Fighter - Towards Shell Eco Marathon 2015

Shell Eco Marathon (SEM) is an international engineering competition for university students. The aim of the competitions is to build a vehicle that achieves the highest possible energy efficiency. DNV GL Fuel Fighter is NTNU s contribution to SEM 2015. This year team consist of 25 student from different studies, where everyone has their area of expertise in the project. The team decided to develop a new Urban Concept vehicle that has a totally different design compared to previous NTNU Urban Concepts. This text is going to be focusing on the aerodynamic aspect of developing the new Urban Concept. The team used the production development methodology from the department of Design Engineering and Materials (IPM) from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The IPM methodology has four different phases, where the aerodynamic aspect was in all phases. There were two design concepts that were of interest, and which got further aerodynamic analysis by intuition, CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and wind tunnel testing in order t o minimize the drag coefficient. Aerodynamics of vehicles are more than just minimizing the drag coefficient, but it was only time to go through that aerodynamic aspect of developing a vehicle. Concept 1 had a drag coefficient of 0.32 and Concept 2 had a drag coefficient of 0.27, which were good compared to a normal passenger vehicle that has a drag coefficient between 0.30-0.45. The chosen concept was Concept 2, not only because it has lower drag coefficient, but also producing Concept 2 was much easier than Concept 1. During SEM the Urban Concept didn t get any approved attempts, because of some problems with the hydrogen leakage from the fuel cells. However, the team was a runner up on the "design off track award", which was also the team s objective