Vehicle External Aerodynamics(Ahmed Body)

Marwan Hussin

I'm an automotive engineer studying master in the field of "Improvement of Commercial Vehicles Aerodynamics Utilizing Computer Software" (putting the automation of the processes in mind as much as possible) and I've no experience in CFD, Finite Element Technique or Mesh Generation .

I've chose Ahmed body as the case study I'll work through to learn and join the field of CFD -applied to Automotive - and thought as follows from Tools perspective: CAD: from PTC

Pro/E to get the use its parametric power in optimization

IcemSurf tools to model surfaces and reverse engineer others CAE: from Ansys

Ansys FLOTRAN as Pre&Post processor and solver

(because its available in a multiphysics environment which I intend to use in the future and also because there is a well established connection between Ansys and ProE) but I got the feeling from the discussions on cfd-online that I should use FLUENT ,so I changed the plan to using: CAE:

CFD solver: FLUENT

Pre&Post processor: ICEM CFD because I heard that it has a good connection to ProE /FLUENT and almost all CAD and CAE tools

, so I thought you may have the time to tell me: 1) your opinion about the tools I intend to use (and you may recommend others ,as you see suitable). 2) the prerequisites (in terms of books or papers I should read) I should have to attack such kind of problems with such kind of tools ProE&IcemSurf/ICEM CFD/FLUENT or any other tools you recommend.

thanks for your time Marwan