Evaluation of the Effects of the Application of Roof Spoilers for Light Trucks using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

This study will evaluate the different designs of roof spoilers on various light trucks with varying speeds using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD); the Mitsubishi L300, the Kia K2500, and the Hyundai H100 are the light-truck models that will be examined for this study. These vehicles will be created using the 3D Modelling software Fusion360. Each sample will be equipped with different designs of Roof Spoilers and then subjected to a Computational Fluid Analysis (CFD) using ANSYS Fluent. The parameters used for evaluation are the drag coefficient two and its force counterpart. The results from the assessment will be compared between the non-equipped (Base version) and the models equipped with roof spoiler model (RSM). The results show that RSM’s curvature would perform better than the planar version. The significant improvement of curvature RSM ranges from about five to twenty percent, while planar RSM ranges from up to fifteen percent, varying from different trucks. L300 WT has the lowest improvement, with a peak of eleven percent, followed by H100, with a peak of thirteen percent. The K2500 has the highest peak of improvement, gaining up to twenty percent. Regardless of their model, all the RSM were able to improve the aerodynamic performance of the different light trucks.