Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings 16 (2019) 750–757 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings * Corresponding author. Tel.: +91-9730923304 E-mail address: mpbauskar@aissmscoe.com 2214-7853 © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of International Conference on Advances in Materials, Manufacturing and Applied Sciences. ICAMMAS17 Study of Aerodynamic Drag of Sports Utility Vehicle by Experimental and Numerical Method Manoj P. Bauskar a,* , Dinesh Y. Dhande a , Shivraj Vadgeri a , Sunil R. Patil a a Department of Mechanical Engineering, AISSMS College of Engineering, Pune-411001, Maharashtra, India. Abstract Aerodynamic styling of the vehicle is one of the promising technologies which can not only improve the fuel efficiency, but also ensure better stability and good handling characteristics of vehicles at higher speed especially on highways. The paper includes assessment of drag force (F d ) and drag coefficient (C d ) by the conventional wind tunnel method. The experimental calculations were performed using subsonic wind tunnel having a test section of 100cm x 30cm x 30 cm. An exact replica of a model of Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) on reduced scale 1:32 was used to conduct and perform the experiment for calculating F d and C d. Three- dimensional (3D) computational analysis was carried out using Gambit as the preprocessing software and Fluent as the solver and post-processor. The comparison of computational approaches with experiment shows that the computed F d agrees well with the experimental values over the entire range of air velocities. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of International Conference on Advances in Materials, Manufacturing and Applied Sciences. Keywords: CFD, drag force, drag coefficient, aerodynamics 1. Introduction Recently automobile fuel economy, emissions, and recycling have become an important social concern. At the mean time, automotive industry competition has become more brutal and automotive companies began to put more effort on advanced vehicle design. Engineers believe that the automobile should be affordable, yet appealing, safe, and inexpensive to drive. The well designed aerodynamic vehicle consumes not only less fuel in overcoming the drag exerted by air while running at higher speeds, but also offers good stability and handling [1]. Aerodynamic styling of a car is one of the most crucial aspects of car design-a highly complex Phenomenon [2], encompassing the task of an artful integration of advanced engineering and stylish aesthetics. A lot of emphasizing is laid on the aerodynamics [3] in car design as an aerodynamically well-designed car spends the least power in overcoming the drag exerted by air and hence exhibits higher performance- cruises faster and longer, that too less fuel.