Manufacturing and Evaluation of Soft Morphing Flow Separator of Car

Abstract

An interest in morphing technologies has steadily increased over the past few decades in many areas including aircraft and automotive industry. Such technologies are considered to be promising for improving functioning and effectiveness of vehicles over a broad range of working conditions. Particularly, in land vehicles morphing structures can be used for replacing their aerodynamic pieces for transforming their surfaces without opening gaps and discrete sections which cause aerodynamic losses and other drawbacks such as noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), also known as noise and vibration (N&V) characteristics of vehicles. In the proposed work, a smart soft composite actuator based on shape memory alloy (SMA) wires was developed for fabrication of an air flow separator installed in the rear part of a 1/8-scaled radio-controlled car. For evaluation of the aerodynamic performance and efficiency of the car, field tests were conducted, and the results were then compared with the performance of the car without the flow separator tested under the same conditions.