Blender as a wind tunnel
 

Apparently you can use blender as a crude wind tunnel. I don't think the results are very accurate but you can make things look nice. There have been a few people playing around with using it for a front end to OpenFoam, however it only makes somethings easier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJH-6TnRNHA

another tutorial video showing how to make a flag


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ1G0naTNV0

For those that are unaware, Blender is a 3D animation program.
It rivals the best in the world like Maya, 3DSMax, and XSI, yet is open source - as in FREE, so it costs thousands less than the well known stuff.
( I am a former XSI user )

blender.org - Home

I wish I had the skills to render 3D objects using such programs. The learning curve looks steep.

Dopey me, I was like thinking you were taking your Blender for making Milkshakes and somehow using it to do wind tunnel testing, I was skeptical.......I have to admit, I thought Indians smoking fish was sort of weird, like, how did they keep the pipe lit? till I was 25 and I got some smoked fish at a road side deli type place in the UP of Michigan. I was eating the fish and thought, oh.

This Blender looks great actually, that Subaru? in the first post looks very good, the only odd thing is the particles flying up at the top of the rear glass and on the rear spoiler. I'm going to get it and play with it. Hopefully I don't lose what's left of my thinning hair.

It does take dedication and lots of time, but to get started at it with something simple, you could use these two free programs :

Google SketchUp : Google SketchUp

As well as this one :

Wings3D : Wings 3D :thumbup:

Sometimes you can find a model of your car that someone has done for free. If not you can usually buy a 3D model of your car.

Unfortunately Blender will (as far as I can tell) only show you smoke flow around an object. Not give you numbers for things like drag. Still it might give insight on some things like air dams and boat tails.

I wouldn't expect it be able to tell you how to install vortex generators as even the professional CFD programs have trouble doing that without a real wind tunnel to verify assumptions.

The top of the rear glass ones are caused by the antenna. If you look carefully, you can see the thin black line of it right where the flow goes upward there.

The flying-up from the spoiler looks pretty legit, at first glance.

-soD

Zombie thread, back from the dead!

I went looking for a thread wherein I'd mentioned using Blender for CFD. Lo and behold, there is a thread [this very one] from 2011 on the very subject.

Anyways, this isn't about CFD, but I was trying to understand de-noising and the compositor and this video*, at this time stamp, shows an add-on that enables vehicle suspension physics. So you can —you know— CFD on uneven terrain.

* Classy Dog Studios: Car VFX with Blender & After Effects