Aerodynamic Performance Analysis of Formula-Based Vehicle Through Ansys

Abstract

The method to enhance the performance of race cars by adding downforce producing devices is well established and started in the 1960s when wings were first used. In short, wings enhance the effectiveness of the tires by increasing the load on the tires without adding the equivalent mass. As mentioned earlier, wings increase race car performance by providing a “massless” load to the tires. The wings will add weight to the vehicle, and the performance gain must outweigh the drawbacks of this extra weight and the addition of drag that the wing also cause. As a key characteristic of the vehicle, aerodynamic characteristics have close relationships with handling stability, safety, dynamics, fuel economy, and so on. The aerodynamic characteristics’ influence on the vehicle performance is particularly obvious; for formula cars with exposed wheels, the car wheel resistance accounted for the proportion of the total resistance sometimes can go to over 45%. In the car development process, researchers pay great attention to the car aerodynamic characteristics research and optimization, and aerodynamics package has become an important part of the car. Optimization is one of the most important parts of the aerodynamic devices design because optimization is done by taking into consideration of many parameters. First, the wings are optimized to the maximum downforce and minimum drag individually by altering the angle of attack of both the ME (main element) and FE (flap element) and the position of the flap element concerning the main element. Then the individually optimized wings are incorporated into the CAD (Computer Aided Design) model and further optimized to tune the wings to get the maximum efficiency out of the car.