Design of the outer shells improves fuel consumption
The outer shell of the car consists of two parts (a front and rear half respectively), both of which have been made from carbon fiber. The outer shells cover the entire length of the car and serve the obvious purpose of sheltering driver, engine and internal components from the weather. Furthermore, the outer shells contribute to the extremely low fuel consumption of the vehicle, as they give the car its extremely low air resistance. The outer shells has been aerodynamically optimized in order to give the car as low air resistance as possible, which in turn means that the engine needs to work less in order to power the vehicle and thereby uses less fuel. The extremely aerodynamic design of DTU Dynamo has given it a wind resistance coefficient (Cw-value) of app. 0.14.
Super streamlined
Overcoming air resistance is one of the greatest challenges faced by engineers when designing a car – and DTU Dynamo has been no exception. The outer shells of the vehicle have been designed to give the car as little air resistance as possible when driving, in order to minimize the amount of energy that would otherwise be used to break the wind.
Developing the shell design
In relation to the design of the outer shells, a lot of time has been spent on physical and digital analyses of the cars aerodynamic properties. First of all, scale models of the outer shells were machined from the material cibertool and afterwards tested in the wind tunnel at the DTU Mechanical Engineering. Afterwards, digital 3D models of the vehicle have been tested using CFD-analysis (Computational Fluid Dynamics). The results of the physical and digital tests have been used to refine the shape of the vehicle body, resulting in an extremely low air resistance coefficient for the vehicle of app. 0.14 (the so-called Cw-value). For comparison, a generic modern production car will have a Cw-value between 0.27 and 0.32.
