Aerovehicles 7 provides a dedicated platform for scientists and engineers from both industry (including manufacturers and operators of road vehicles and rolling stock) and academic institutions to present and discuss state-of-the-art advances, emerging methodologies and key research needs across the field of vehicle aerodynamics. Core thematic areas include:
- Physical modelling of aerodynamic flow phenomena
- Numerical prediction methods and high-fidelity flow simulation
- Experimental measurement techniques, facilities and validation
- Processing and analysis of large-scale aerodynamic data sets
Aerodynamic performance underpins a broad spectrum of ground vehicle capabilities, from drag-related energy efficiency and passenger safety to environmental impacts such as air pollution and aerodynamic noise. Amid global climate action and increasingly stringent regulations, aerodynamic drag reduction stands as a central challenge for next-generation vehicle design: it directly lowers greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions to meet regulatory requirements, while extending the operating range of electric vehicles. This imperative is amplified across both automotive and railway sectors. For automotive manufacturers, drag reduction goals are reinforced by emission-related financial penalties and evolving consumer preferences, alongside competing design constraints from styling, thermal management and compliance. For railways, there is growing demand to optimise full-lifecycle energy consumption at the design phase, while higher speeds for heavy-haul freight create an urgent need to examine aerodynamic effects on vehicles, trackside infrastructure and passenger platforms. Beyond baseline performance, real-world operation also introduces critical two-phase flow challenges – including sand and dust ingestion, rain and icing conditions, and high-speed train ballast projection – where gas-solid and gas-liquid flow interactions directly govern operational safety, component durability and consistent aerodynamic behaviour.
Accurately predicting ground vehicle aerodynamic properties remains a complex task, requiring complementary numerical and experimental techniques to advance understanding of flow behaviour, noise generation and multi-phase flow dynamics. The aerodynamics of road vehicles and trains share strong fundamental similarities, allowing many tools and methodologies to be applied across both domains. While drag reduction under real operating conditions continues to drive methodological advances, a wide range of additional challenges – including crosswind stability, unsteady flows from tunnel passages and vehicle interactions, aeroacoustics and soiling – demand improved prediction and analysis approaches. In recent years, significant progress has been made on both experimental and numerical fronts, from advanced wind tunnel facilities and high-precision measurement techniques to time-resolved flow simulation and high-fidelity two-phase flow modelling. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence and data-driven frameworks have emerged as transformative additions: they enable rapid flow field prediction via reduced-order models, intelligent mining of large-scale aerodynamic datasets, and efficient surrogate modelling for design exploration, greatly expanding the capacity to tackle complex aerodynamic problems.
Building on improved predictive capabilities, flow control has become a pivotal research direction for translating aerodynamic insights into tangible performance gains. Encompassing both passive and active strategies, flow control technologies target targeted manipulation of flow structures to reduce drag, suppress flow separation, mitigate aeroacoustic noise and regulate adverse two-phase flow behaviours such as dust accumulation and water adhesion. Passive approaches rely on refined geometric designs and aerodynamic appendages to reshape the flow field, while active control systems – increasingly augmented by artificial intelligence for real-time, closed-loop regulation – adapt dynamically to changing operating conditions and flow states. When integrated with systematic aerodynamic shape optimisation methodologies, flow control opens new pathways to achieve performance improvements that would be unattainable through geometry design alone, making it one of the most innovative and fast-evolving themes in modern ground vehicle aerodynamics.