A Numerical Investigation of the Flow Past a Generic Side Mirror and its Impact on Sound Generation

The case investigated is the flow past a generic side mirror mounted on a flat plate at the Reynolds number of $ReD=5.2×105$ based on the mirror diameter. The present work studies both flow and acoustic sources by evaluating two second-order advection schemes, different levels of turbulence modeling, and three different grids. The advection schemes discussed in the present study are a second-order upwind scheme and a monotonic central scheme. The turbulence models investigated cover three levels of modeling. These are the original formulation of the detached eddy simulation (DES) model, the Smagorinsky–Lilly sub-grid scale (SGS) model with near-wall damping, and a dynamic Smagorinsky model. The different grids are as follows: a primary grid where all parameter studies are conducted and a second grid with significantly higher wake resolution and to some extent also increased plate resolution, while maintaining the resolution at the front side of the mirror. The final grid uses a significantly higher plate resolution and a wake resolution similar to that of grid two, but a comparably lower mirror front side resolution as compared with the two other grids. The general outcome of this work is that the estimation of the grid cutoff frequency through a relation of the velocity fluctuation and the grid size matches both the experimental results and trend lines perfectly. Findings from the flow field show that the horseshoe vortex in front of the mirror causes pressure fluctuations with a magnitude exceeding the maximum levels at the rear side of the mirror. Its location and unsteady properties are perfectly captured in the final simulation as compared with the experiments conducted by Daimler–Chrysler. A laminar separation at the front side of the mirror is more or less found for all wall resolved cases except the DES simulation. The third grid fails to predict this flow feature, but it is shown that this effect has no significant effect on either the static pressure sensors at the mirror surface or at the dynamic sensors located downstream of the mirror. The simulation also supports the fundamental frequency based on the eddy convection in the mirror shear layer, which is shown to be twice as high as the frequency peak found in the lateral force spectra.