Improvement of aerodynamic design of vehicles with inspiration from creatures

In this work, flow analysis, drag forces and drag coefficients of various bus models are investigated. Reduced drag forces result in lower fuel consumptions. The geometrical shape of the bus is very important for efficient streamlining and reduced drag. For a given volumetric inner space, the goal would then be to search for optimum shapes. For those shapes, inspiration is taken from nature. Due to its highly efficient hydrodynamics body, beluga whale and sperm whale shape are taken as an example and similar forms are designed for buses. The body is drawn using UNIGRAPHICS program. The drawings are then inserted into ANSYS CFD program for meshing. Drag forces and drag coefficients corresponding to the various designs are determined using Fluent (solver) and CFX (result) program. To compare with the experimental results, the tests are carried out in a wind tunnel. Experimental data and numerical calculations are compared. Substantial reduction in drag coefficients is possible for these new geometries which are inspired from whales.