Side-View Mirror Vibrations Induced Aerodynamically by Separating Vortices

While driving a car at high speed cruising, the mirror surface of side-view mirrors happens to vibrate. The vibration often leads to image blurs of objects reflected in the mirror. Once the phenomena happen, drivers cannot clearly identify the approaching vehicles from the rear. The paper aims to clarify the vibration modes of side-view mirror experimentally and to capture forces on the mirror surface induced by separating vortices around the mirror numerically. Experimental study clarified two findings. One is that the mirror has the primary natural frequencies of 25, 30 and 33 Hz. The other is that vibrations of the mirror increase in proportion to flow velocity and their frequencies have peak values at 120 and 140 km/h. The frequencies of the mirror vibration coincide completely with the primary natural frequencies. In order to capture the external forces vibrating the mirror surface, numerical study was performed by unsteady air-flow analyses. Relationships between flow velocity fluctuations close to the mirror surface and pressure fluctuations on the mirror surface were investigated. It was found that the two power spectra have peak values at the same frequency of 24.4 Hz at 120 km/h. This shows that flow velocity fluctuations with the frequency of 24.4 Hz affect directly pressure fluctuations on the mirror surface. Numerical analyses clarify that the frequencies of shedding vortices are 24.4 Hz at 120 km/h and 28.3 Hz at 140 km/h. The frequencies of mirror vibration are very close to those of flow fluctuations. This shows that the frequencies of the mirror vibration have much to do with the frequencies of the forces induced aerodynamically by vortex shedding. Therefore it follows that image blurs at high speed cruising are caused by resonance phenomena that the mirror surface resonates with the frequencies of shedding vortices around the mirror.

Aerodynamic Sound Radiated from Longitudinal and Transverse Vortex Systems Generated around the Leading Edge of Delta Wings

Flow around the front pillar of an automobile is typical of a flow field with separated and reattached flow by a vortex system. It is known that the vortex system causes the greatest aerodynamic sound around a vehicle. The objective of the present study is to clarify the relationship between vortical structures and aerodynamic sound by the vortex system generated around the front pillar. The vortex system consists of the longitudinal and the transverse system. The characteristics of the longitudinal vortex system were investigated in comparison with the transverse one. Two vortex systems were reproduced by three-dimensional delta wings. The flow visualization experiment and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) captured well the characteristics of the flow structure of the two vortex systems. These results showed that the longitudinal with the rotating axis along mean flow direction had cone-shaped configuration whereas the transverse with the rotating axis vertical to mean flow direction had elliptic one. Increasing the tip angles of the wings from 40 to 140 degrees, there first exists the longitudinal vortex system less than 110 degrees, with the transition region ranging from 110 to 120 degrees, and finally over 120 degrees the transverse appears. The characteristics of aerodynamic sound radiated from the two vortex systems were investigated in low Mach numbers, high Reynolds number turbulent flows in the lownoise wind tunnel. As a result, it was found that the aerodynamic sound radiated from both the longitudinal and the transverse vortex system was proportional to the fifth from sixth power of mean flow velocity, and that the longitudinal vortex generated the aerodynamic sound larger than the transverse.