Meet SIMULIA Champion Raja Sengupta. He is Lead Engineer for Aerodynamics at Volvo Trucks in Greensboro, North Carolina. Sengupta is responsible for the aerodynamic certification (for CO2) of Volvo’s North American product portfolio and is in charge of aerodynamic development for the SuperTruck II project sponsored by the Department of Energy.

“The SuperTruck program…represents the pinnacle of all [my] experience—bringing together aerodynamics, cooling, chassis layout, trailer optimization,” he says. “It was a once in a lifetime experience, and I was able to do it twice.”

One small success story Sengupta is proud of is the EPA’s acceptance of a surrogate yaw angle that represents the wind-averaged condition per SAE J1252. Sengupta investigated the yaw curves (drag vs. crosswind angle) of many truck configurations and found that the effective yaw angle, at which the drag on a tractor-trailer matches the SAE J1252 wind averaged drag, falls in a narrow band irrespective of the truck model or its aero features. Therefore, in effect, one could obtain the wind averaged drag by simulating just this surrogate angle, rather than a complete sweep of 11 yaw angles as the regulation originally mandated. This reduced the computational burden on the OEMs from 11 simulations per configuration down to 2 (±Ψ, where Ψ is the effective or surrogate yaw angle). This rare win-win scenario satisfied all parties involved.

Outside of work, Sengupta enjoys movies, music, and spending time with his 13-year-old twin sons. Interestingly, Sengupta is a twin himself. Lately, he has been helping his children with online schooling.

We will be getting to know some of our individual SIMULIA Champion in a series of blogs, finding out more about their history – and future – with the technology.

Read the full interview with Sengupta on the SIMULIA Blog: 

Also, check out Raja's article in the COMPASS | The 3DEXPERIENCE Magazine: 

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