Case Study: Carbuss achieves 16% reduction in drag and improved bus aerodynamics with SimScale

Carbuss used SimScale to reduce drag and improve the aerodynamics of its new commercial bus

Carbuss, the Brazilian bus manufacturer that relaunched the Busscar brand, needed to minimize aerodynamic drag on its new VISSTA Bus 360 to reduce fuel consumption and operating costs. To quantify drag forces and coefficients and improve body design early in development, Carbuss turned to SimScale’s cloud-based CFD simulation platform.

Using SimScale, Carbuss uploaded three CAD models into a virtual wind tunnel with a moving floor and rotating wheels, generated an 18 million-cell mesh with the Hex Parametric mesher, and ran incompressible-flow simulations on 96 cores. The SimScale-powered study enabled three design iterations and identified mirror and body changes that cut drag coefficient by 16% and drag force by 15% versus the VB 360 Elegance (5% lower than the best competitor), while also helping realize estimated hardware savings (~$10K) and faster development.

Carbuss

Hugo Kuhn

Product Development Engineer