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Meshing Considerations for Automotive Shape
Design Optimization
Travis Carrigan
Pointwise, Inc.
Mark Landon
Optimal Solutions Software LLC
Claudio Pita
Pointwise, Inc.
CITATION: Carrigan, T., Landon, M., and Pita, C., "Meshing Considerations for Automotive Shape Design Optimization," SAE
Technical Paper 2016-01-1389, 2016, doi:10.4271/2016-01-1389.
Copyright © 2016 SAE International
Abstract
High quality mesh generation technology coupled with a robust shape
deformation technique enables large design space exploration for
optimization without the need to remesh the geometry. To
demonstrate this, we present a collection of best practices for
cleaning complex analytic CAD data that together with a robust grid
generation algorithm enable the automatic generation of high quality
boundary layer resolved grids that retain their quality when morphed
during the optimization process.
The case study for this work is the DrivAer model developed by the
Institute of Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics at the Technische
Universität München.
The first step in the proposed automated optimization framework is to
use a technique called Solid Meshing to heal faults in the provided
geometry and recover its original engineering intent. The
aforementioned technique coupled with Pointwise’s anisotropic
tetrahedral extrusion algorithm (T-Rex), enables automated, high
quality volumetric grid generation.
A technology called Arbitrary Shape Deformation (ASD) is then used
to smoothly morph the DrivAer volume grid using a small set of
shape change parameters. The robustness of this morphing
technology enables the achievement of large grid deformations while
maintaining cell quality and surface boundary layer thickness and
orientation.
As mentioned, the proposed design optimization framework
eliminates the need to regenerate the grid after every volumetric
deformation. This, in turn, minimizes the effect of changes to the
characteristics of the grid on the simulation results.
2016-01-1389
Published 04/05/2016
Introduction
The traditional computational design optimization process is a loop.
The designer begins by defining parameters and constraints for the
geometry. The minimal number of design parameters are chosen to
reduce the number of experiments performed. The geometry and
computational domain are then discretized. The computational
domain could be the fluid, for computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
simulations, or the solid, for finite element analysis (FEA)
simulations. The grid is then sent to a solver that numerically solves
the set of equations governing the desired physics. The simulation
results are subsequently used to compute the value of an objective
function that when fed to an optimization routine suggest changes to
the design parameters to effectively minimize or maximize the
aforementioned function. The updated design parameters are used to
appropriately modify the geometry. At this point the geometry needs
to be remeshed and both the solver and the optimization routines need
to be called again. This process continues until either the convergence
or stop criteria are met.
While the traditional design optimization process is robust and can be
automated with little effort for simple geometry [1], a geometry that
is complex not only in terms of the overall shape, but also in terms of
the number of curves, surfaces, and solids poses a challenge for
optimization. Parameterizing a complex analytic computer aided
design (CAD) model and enforcing design constraints for each
parameter is a difficult task because the effect of the parameterization
plays a critical role in the grid generation process. Under constraining
a design can wreak havoc on a grid generator, whereas over
constraining it can shrink the overall optimization design space.
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The parameterization of the CAD model and the enforcement of the
design constraints must be done in conjunction with the grid
generation process. The quality of the resulting grid is therefore a
direct result of both the underlying numerics of the grid generation
tool itself and the representation of the complex geometry.
Lastly, the significant effect of the grid quality on the stability,
convergence, and accuracy of the simulation results [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
added to the constraints imposed by the numerical solver on the
quality of the grid, further stresses the need for a robust grid
generator that can handle an expanded design envelope while
automatically generating high quality grids. When dealing with
complex geometries, placing constraints on and automating the grid
generation process is time consuming. Remeshing each intermediate
design not only increases the time required to converge on a final
design, it also affects the final solution by introducing variations in
the objective function due to differences in the characteristics of the
grids. Regeneration of the grids, should therefore be avoided for high
fidelity design optimization of complex geometries.
Rather than going through the process of parameterizing complex
CAD models and remeshing each design, it is common practice to
decouple CAD handling and meshing from the optimization
framework. This restructuring ultimately improves the robustness and
throughput of the system. A mesh morpher is necessary to close the
optimization loop. Several studies have demonstrated the validity of
this approach [7, 8, 9, 10, 11] including an automotive shape design
study using a simplified automobile model [12].
A mesh morpher takes a computational grid and parameterizes it in a
way that allows many designs to stem from a single mesh by
morphing the mesh directly. Several mesh morphing strategies exist
[13] all with the goal of being able to morph the grid as much as
possible in order to expand the design space while retaining cell
quality; particularly in the boundary layer region of a mesh suited for
CFD. Because the overall topology of the grid does not change,
remeshing can safely be eliminated from the optimization process
unless the morphing routine violates any imposed cell quality
constraints. It is therefore advantageous to generate high quality grids
to be used with any morphing strategy.
This paper will focus on the strategies and technologies that enable
the creation of high quality grids for complex analytic CAD models
and a shape deformation technique that retains cell quality. The
geometry used for this study is the DrivAer model proposed by the
Institute of Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics at the Technische
Universität München [14]. The DrivAer body represents a realistic
external automotive geometry that was developed in cooperation with
Audi AG and the BMW Group. Pointwise® is used to generate the
computational grid while Sculptor® is used to perform the mesh
deformation and optimization, and OpenFOAM® used to run the CFD
calculation and compute the coefficient of drag, the objective
function value used in this study.
Methodology
The methodology for this work involves decoupling geometry
generation and parameterization, as well as grid generation from the
main shape deformation and optimization routine. An overview of
this process can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The optimization process with CAD and meshing decoupled from
the main mesh deformation and optimization routine.
The CAD model for the DrivAer was provided in two analytic
formats: STEP and Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES).
After importing the CAD data defining each major part of the car into
Pointwise, a technique called Solid Meshing [15] is used to represent
the geometry via topological CAD entities that allow for automated
watertight surface and volume grid generation. The grid is then
exported to the native OpenFOAM polyMesh format.
Sculptor is used to import the OpenFOAM grid file, define the
Arbitrary Shape Deformation (ASD) volumes, and initialize a
population of design experiments using an optimal Latin Hypercube
Sampling method (LHS). The ASD volume control points
parameterize the deformation. Sculptor is also used as a framework to
automate the optimization process and build a response surface for
further optimization or sampling if desired.
Applications within the open source CFD package OpenFOAM are
used to numerically solve the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes
(RANS) equations. Simulations are performed for each design
proposed by Sculptor and the coefficient of drag computed and
stored. Once all the designs have been evaluated, the case that results
in minimum drag is selected as the improved design.
Grid Generation
Grid generation is the act of discretizing the computational domain
into a collection of elements. When working with complex geometry,
such as the DrivAer model, coupled with a mesh morphing utility,
grid generation and in particular the quality of the resulting grid
become critical to the success of the optimization. A robust meshing
technique that can generate high quality grids enables the exploration
of a much larger design space without the need to remesh. This
section focuses on the technologies and techniques that enable
automated high quality meshing for complex geometry.
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Solid Modeling
For this study we used the DrivAer vehicle with the smooth
underbody, mirrors, and wheels (F_S_wM_wW). Both STEP and
IGES formats were available. Each part was imported and placed into
a unique layer for organization within Pointwise. The final geometry
consisted of 3,217 individual surfaces shown in Figure 2. Solid
Modeling was used to reduce the topological complexity of the
geometry for meshing.
but reduce surface mesh complexity and isolate regions where more
control over the mesh would be desirable such as corners, areas of
high surface curvature, or small features.
The 3,217 surfaces were each assigned a quilt and through a series of
assembly operations, the quilts were constructed for the DrivAer that
isolated engineering features such as the hood, windshield, roof,
windows, bumper, and other features on the vehicle. A total of 434
quilts were used to represent the DrivAer model and are each
rendered using different colors in Figure 4.

Figure 2. The geometry after import consisted of 3,217 unique surfaces.

A model is a watertight collection of underlying CAD surfaces and
can be used to heal over gaps using an assembly tolerance. The
DrivAer was relatively clean, so a tight assembly tolerance was used
during model assembly. The underlying geometry remained
untouched as the models were assembled. A model is simply
topology, or a meshing construct that relates underlying surfaces to
one another and enables automated surface meshing. Seven models
were assembled to represent the entire geometry and can be seen in
Figure 3.
Figure 4. Only 434 quilts, or logical meshing regions, remained after the Solid
Modeling procedure, reducing the surface topology of the DrivAer.
Surface Meshing
With the logical meshing regions defined using quilts, the next step
was surface meshing to discretize the geometry. While fewer quilts
are required to represent the model than surfaces, this does not imply
a reduction in geometric fidelity. The same underlying geometry is
used to constrain the surface mesh, but the topology is simplified
through the use of quilts.

Figure 3. Seven watertight models were assembled that represented the

DrivAer vehicle body, two mirrors, and four wheels.

In addition to models, quilts are used to define logical meshing

regions and their associated boundaries. Quilts are another meshing
construct that relate underlying trimmed surfaces, each with their
own parameterization, and form a single topological entity for Figure 5. The final surface mesh consisted of 383,374 triangles generated
meshing [16]. Quilt boundaries become grid curves and are used to using an advancing front meshing algorithm.
capture hard edges in the geometry or bound engineering surfaces to
be assigned boundary conditions later on in the simulation process.
As meshing regions, quilts not only help recover engineering intent,
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An advancing front triangular meshing algorithm was chosen and an

average grid spacing of 30mm was used for the baseline surface
mesh. To reduce the overall cell count and generate elements with the
highest possible cell quality on the surface, automatic surface
curvature based refinement was disabled. In a single operation a
watertight surface mesh was generated. The grid curves spanning
quilts boundaries were modified and used to refine hard edges and
areas of high curvature to efficiently resolve the geometry. The final
cell count on the surface was 383,374 triangles and the resulting
surface mesh can be seen in Figure 5. The two step operation of
generating a baseline surface mesh and then refining the bounding
grid curves offers the most control over the surface mesh creation and
cell quality.

Additionally, in an effort to generate a high quality volume mesh, two

grid quality metrics were examined on the surface. The area ratio Figure 6. A vertex advancing from a triangular surface mesh generates a fan of
metric looks at the ratio between the areas of two adjacent elements. anisotropic tetrahedral elements.
The lower the area ratio the smoother the surface mesh. The
maximum area ratio on the surface was 7.1 with 334 cells higher than
an area ratio of 4. The maximum included angle on the surface was
156.6 degrees with only 2 cells over 150 degrees. The quality of the
surface mesh has a substantial impact on the volume mesh quality
and the soft limits imposed for the area ratio and maximum included
angle are recommended to achieve the highest possible quality for
mesh deformation.

Volume Meshing
The volume meshing algorithm in Pointwise used in this study is
called T-Rex (anisotropic tetrahedral extrusion) and automatically
generates viscous hybrid grids for CFD [17]. Once the surface mesh
Figure 7. Stacks of right-angled anisotropic tetrahedra and isotropic tetrahedra
had been defined for the DrivAer and the farfield surface grids
away from the surface.
constructed, a closed volumetric region called a block was created
with the same dimensions described in [14]. The DrivAer was placed Upon export, anisotropic tetrahedra can be combined to form prisms
2 body lengths downstream from the inlet and the domain was 10x if advanced from triangular surface elements and hexahedra if
the body length with a height 8x the body height and width 11x the advanced from quadrilateral surface elements [19]. Pyramid elements
body width. The block represented the computational domain where are formed to transition from exposed quad faces for seamless
volumetric elements were to be generated. integration with an isotropic tetrahedral farfield. Figure 8 shows the
different elements created during combination. The element
T-Rex begins with a watertight front of triangular and/or quadrilateral advancement and combination procedures are automatic and result in
elements. Given an initial grid spacing, growth rate, and number of thick stacks of boundary layer elements and massive cell count
target layers, vertices are advanced orthogonal to the surface and reductions.
form anisotropic tetrahedra through a series of deformation,
refinement and decimation steps. Figure 6 illustrates the advancement
of a vertex forming a fan of five anisotropic tetrahedra. As vertices
are advanced, the cells formed can be rejected if any quality criteria
are violated [18], if the front of advancing cells is in close proximity
to an opposing front, or if the cells have reached an isotropic state. If
a cell must stop advancing, neighboring cells can continue their
advancement if the above mentioned criteria are not violated. The
result is an unstructured front of anisotropic tetrahedra that do not
have to form contiguous layers. The front is then passed to an
isotropic tetrahedral mesher to fill the remaining block. Anisotropic
tetrahedra advanced from a surface mesh integrated with an isotropic
tetrahedral farfield can be seen in the Figure 7.

Figure 8. Cells are combined to form hexahedra and prisms near the wall as
well as pyramids to transition from quad faces to isotropic tetrahedra in the
farfield.
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Using T-Rex, a maximum of 22 layers were advanced off the DrivAer

body, mirrors, and wheels with a growth rate of 1.2 and an initial grid
spacing of 1.5mm. The initial grid spacing was computed to achieve a
y+ value of 50 based on the length of the vehicle. Layers were not
advanced off the ground plane in an effort to reduce the cell count
and because a translating wall boundary condition was applied. A
collision buffer of 2.0 was used to ensure enough space was left
between encroaching fronts for relatively isotropic tetrahedra to be
formed to improve cell quality. The collision buffer is a factor of the
current cell height. A maximum angle of 165 degrees was specified to
prevent anisotropic tetrahedra with high included angles from being
generated. And a centroid skew of 0.65 was selected to further
constrain the grid quality in the boundary layer region. Centroid
skewness is the angular deviation between the cell face normal vector
and the vector connecting the cell centroid with the face centroid and
is analogous to the non-orthogonality metric used by OpenFOAM.
High centroid skew values have a strong effect on the convective
Figure 9. Volume mesh for the DrivAer generated using Pointwise’s T-Rex
derivative in the Navier-Stokes equations and can introduce
meshing algorithm.
numerical errors as cell centered values are projected to the cell face
center [2]. Figure 10 shows the prism elements around the side mirror. The side
mirror itself is convex with two severe concavities where it attaches
The volume mesh initialization is single-threaded and took 5 minutes to the vehicle body near the A-pillar. In the concave regions,
of wall-clock time to generate 13,512,859 tetrahedral elements for the decimation occurred and in conjunction with local surface mesh
DrivAer. Because cell quality is of primary interest, extensive refinement and the collision buffer, sufficient layer growth was
examination within Pointwise was conducted to ensure quality limits achieved. Figure 10 also clearly illustrates the non-uniform stacks of
suitable for OpenFOAM were not violated. In particular, the metrics prism elements that were recovered. Point advancement stopped
investigated were the maximum included angle of an element and the earlier in some areas as quality criteria were violated or collisions
centroid skewness. The maximum included angle of any element was would have occurred but continued advancing where possible. The
171.5 degrees with only 5 elements above 170 degrees. The result is more layers than a traditional semi-structured prismatic
maximum centroid skewness was 0.89 with 168 cells over 0.7. extrusion from a triangular front [20].

To further reduce the cell count and improve boundary layer mesh
quality and alignment, the right-angled anisotropic tetrahedral cells
were combined on export to form prisms. Three right-angled
tetrahedra can form a single prism, and therefore the theoretical
maximum cell count reduction is 66.7%. However, the grid also
consisted of isotropic tetrahedra in the farfield that were not
combined. The final cell count after combination was 6,738,704, a
cell count reduction of 49.9%. A breakdown of element counts can be
seen in Table 1.

Table 1. The final element counts for the hybrid DrivAer mesh created using
Pointwise.

Closer inspection of the mesh revealed thick stacks of prismatic
elements off the DrivAer body and smooth volumetric transitions.
Figure 9 shows a slice of the volume mesh down the symmetry plane.
The cells are colored by cell volume to clearly highlight the different
regions of the mesh. The effect of the area ratio on the surface can be
seen into the volume as cells transition to isotropy differently around
the vehicle. The smaller cells used to capture features on and around
the front fascia transition to isotropy faster than the larger cells along
the hood of the vehicle. Conscious use of the area ratio as a guide
during surface mesh generation helped to reduce the overall cell
count and improve volume mesh quality.
Figure 10. Prism elements generated using T-Rex around the mirror of the
DrivAer.
Additional volumetric refinement may be desired in some instances
and can be accomplished by modifying the face definition of an
unstructured block within Pointwise. For the DrivAer, properly
capturing the wake can positively affect the drag prediction. A refined
block consisting of tetrahedral elements smaller than the original
background spacing downstream of the vehicle allowed for precise
cell volume control and can be seen in Figure 11. The wake block
extended two car body lengths downstream.
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Figure 11. Blocks are used for additional volumetric grid refinement such as
the wake region behind the vehicle.
Numerical Setup/Baseline Results
The physical boundary conditions for the simulation were prescribed
within Pointwise. An inlet velocity of 16m/s was specified upstream
of the vehicle and an inlet/outlet boundary at the exit to prevent any
flow back into the computational domain. The sides and top of the
domain were constructed sufficiently far from the vehicle and
specified a slip condition. The floor was given a translating wall
boundary condition with the same 16m/s inlet velocity to simulate a
stationary road and a moving vehicle. Additionally, a rotating wall
boundary condition was specified for the front and back wheels. A
top-down view of the computational domain highlighting the position
of the vehicle in relation to the boundaries is show in Figure 12.
Figure 12. A top-down view of the computational domain with flow moving
from left to right.
The solution was initialized using potentialFoam, a potential flow
solver within the OpenFOAM framework. The application
simpleFoam, a cell-centered, finite volume based, steady-state,
incompressible, RANS flow solver, was used to run the calculation.
The simpleFoam application, as the name suggests, relies on the
SIMPLE algorithm to handle the pressure-velocity coupling. The
one-equation Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model [21] was selected
and with a y+ of approximately 50 a wall function was used that gave
a continuous turbulent viscosity profile based on the velocity
proposed by Spalding [22]. The modified turbulent viscosity was set
to 0.0m2/s at the walls and 7.5e-5m2/s, or 5x the kinematic viscosity
of air in the freestream.
To improve solver stability, a multi-dimensional face limiter was
employed for the gradient scheme. A bounded second-order upwind
interpolation scheme was selected for the velocity and first-order
upwind for the remaining divergence terms. Second-order central
differencing was chosen for both the Laplacian schemes and surface
normal gradient schemes with a limited non-orthogonality correction
enabled.
A generalized geometric-algebraic multi-grid linear solver with a
diagonal incomplete-Cholesky smoother was used to solve for the
pressure to improve convergence behavior. And a coupled
preconditioned bi-conjugate gradient solver was selected for the
velocity while the modified turbulent viscosity was solved using the
standard preconditioned bi-conjugate gradient solver, both using a
diagonal incomplete-LU preconditioner. To account for non-
orthogonality in the mesh, three non-orthogonal correctors were used.
All linear solver tolerances were set to 1e-6 with relative tolerances
of 0.01.
A total of 5000 iterations were carried out. The coefficient of drag
was averaged over the last 1000 iterations and found to be 0.252. The
computed coefficient of drag compared well with the experimental
value of 0.243, a 3.7% difference for the same DrivAer configuration.
The drag throughout the simulation compared with the experimental
value can be seen in Figure 13. The oscillatory nature of the drag
implies that the simulation was unsteady due to the fluctuating wake
behind the vehicle. While simpleFoam was sufficient for this single
analysis to validate our meshing strategy, pimpleFoam, a transient
solver based on the merged PISO-SIMPLE algorithm was used to
reveal sensitivities to subtle design changes obfuscated by the noise
in the steady-state solution.
Figure 13. The computed coefficient of drag vs. the experimental value for the
DrivAer (F_S_wM_wW).
Shape Change Parameterization - Design Space
Once the analysis results from the solver are satisfactory for the
baseline case, the next step in the optimization process is to define the
design space by creating shape change parameters. Shape change is
achieved by morphing the CFD mesh in a way as to not destroy the
quality of the cells in the mesh.
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Mesh Morphing Technique Similarly, for the DrivAer grid model, Figure 15 shows the ASD
Arbitrary Shape Deformation (ASD) [23] in Sculptor provides a volume defined for this study. The green points are the near-body
method to define the shape change parameters. ASD is a trivariate control points that will control how the body is morphed. Far-field
NURBS volume(s) defined by a number of control points placed at control points (not show) are placed a distance away from the car
judicious locations around the geometry that is to be deformed surface to help define the necessary smooth deformation out into the
(morphed). The smooth volumetric morphing is controlled by moving flow domain, thus maintaining the quality of the cells during the
selected control points. Grouping selected control points, and deformation.
constraining them to move together, the desired shape change
parameters are defined (translation, rotation, or scaling). Each shape
change design variable is a group of control points that is controlled
by a single parameter. All design variables and their limits (min/max)
define the design space wherein the optimization algorithm(s) search
to find the optimal design/shape.

Figure 15. The control points (green points) of the ASD volume for the
parameterization of the DrivAer grid model.

Control points were grouped to define 4 separate shape change

variables for this study, namely, the windshield rake, the rear spoiler’s
height and extension, and the lower rear rake (see Figure 16 and 17).

Figure 16. The control points near the base of the windshield are grouped to
variably change the windshield rake.

Figure 14. A sphere is embedded in an ASD volume. Control points are moved
and the volume is deformed which causes the sphere to deform.

An example of this shape deformation technique is illustrated by

morphing a sphere in Figure 14 [24]. The defined volume
surrounding the sphere is made up of control points that when
transformed allow the sphere to be deformed in the same manner. The
control points, how they are grouped, and how they are transformed
control the deformation of the object they enclose. This process
Figure 17. Three groups of control points to move the spoiler vertically and
allows a designer to easily define a set of shape design parameters horizontally, and the lower rear’s rake.
that can control very complex deformations without the need to
revisit the CAD model or remesh the geometry for each shape
change.
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Optimization
A Design of Experiments (DOE) with an Optimal Latin Hypercube
was chosen to populate the design space defined by the four design
variables. The purpose of using an Optimal Latin Hypercube is to
spread the experiments evenly within the design space to improve the
chances of locating improved designs and understanding the
characteristics of specific parameter changes on the performance of
each design.
For this work a total of 24 experiments (designs) were defined using
the Optimal Latin Hypercube in the Optimization Control Center
(OCC) within Sculptor, along with a few extra experiments at some
of the design space extremes. Table 2 shows the values of the four
design variables for each experiment.
Table 2. The shape change variables values for the baseline case plus 28
experiments of the optimal Latin hypercube DOE.
Cell Quality
The strength of the ASD is in its smooth volumetric deformation,
where the cells that are deformed maintain their cell quality. Special
attention is given to the boundary layer cells to maintain their
thickness from the car’s surface, as well as the original orientation of
the boundary layer node ‘stack.’ Figure 18 shows the before (top) and
after (bottom) of a 15cm deformation of the rear spoiler. Note that the
general characteristics of the mesh remain. But, more specifically, the
initial boundary layer spacing, orthogonality, and thickness are
retained. It is important to retain boundary layer mesh characteristics
from one design to the next so that y+ values do not change which can
cause substantial differences in the simulation. Such differences
would be grid induced rather than design induced and must be
minimized through high fidelity shape deformation.
Figure 18. A close-up view of the rear spoiler boundary layer cells before (top)
and after (bottom) a deformation of 15 centimeters, showing that the cell
quality is maintained. The boundary layer’s thickness and orientation is
preserved.
Results
Once the DOE was defined, all 28 experiment were exported to disk
in the form of separate OpenFOAM models ready to be solved. File
handling was coordinated with Sculptor’s OCC returning the results
to the GUI for further investigation of the design space. After all
designs were solved, the design functions were returned to OCC. In
this case, the coefficient of drag was returned. To save some
computation time, it was noticed that there was a clear indication of
the sensitivity of the coefficient of drag results early in the
convergence history of the CFD solution. Even though the baseline
case was run to 1.0 seconds using the transient solver pimpleFOAM,
we only needed to run the 28 experiments out to 0.1 seconds to see
the relative sensitivities. Figure 19 shows a plot of the first nine
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experiments and clearly highlights experiment 8 as being the
improved design. The improved design resulted in a 4.4% decrease in
drag, a significant improvement over the baseline DrivAer model.
Figure 19. A clear sensitivity of the Cd to shape change is seen early on in
time history. Experiment 8 had the lowest Cd of the 28 designs of the DOE.
Response Surface Model
The results of the DOE are fit with a response surface within the OCC
Response Surface tool. Response Surface Models use low order
polynomials to approximate the response of an analysis with very
little computational overhead. Figure 20 shows a nested Radial Basis
Response Surface of the four dimensional design space. This shows
the relationship of the 28 experiments with each other. Care must be
taken not to trust the extrapolated portions of the response surface.
One could add experiments at all of the extremes and avoid
extrapolation. However, this is a good plot to help understand the
relationship of the best experiment thus far (experiment 8), and find
areas that might show promise of an even better design.
Figure 20. A nested Radial Basis Response Surface of the four dimensional
design space. The baseline and experiment 8 locations are highlighted.
Summary/Conclusions
Decoupling CAD handling and grid generation from the optimization
routine minimizes the effect of changes to the characteristics of the
grid on the final value of the coefficient of drag. The use of a mesh
morpher allowed for 28 design experiments to be investigated from a
single grid. This was made possible by carefully constructing a high
quality grid and using a robust shape deformation technique that
retained cell quality even for the most severe deformations. The result
was an improved DrivAer design that reduced the drag by 4.4% over
the baseline model.
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