Analysing the effects of air flow on a formula prototype vehicle to optimize its performance

Abstract

FSAE (Formula Society of Automotive Engineers) is an_engineering design competition which challenges students to design and build their own Formula Style race-car. The race-car is being judged on basis of various criteria namely, design, cost, business and performance. For the race-car to participate in the dynamic events and traverse through different sorts of challenging tracks in the least time possible, the tyres must generate appropriate amount of lateral and longitudinal force. The car must not topple even at high speeds and needs to manoeuvre quickly. To achieve the above-mentioned criterion, there is a need of implementing aerodynamics in the car. The optimum amount of downforce necessary to execute a smooth and rapid active behaviour of our car with maximum achievable performance is to be measured keeping vehicle dynamics into consideration. In this paper, vehicle dynamics and aerodynamics are related to an extent where all the above criterion can be achieved successfully, thereby bringing about a trade-off without any sort of compromises in either of them. The co-ordination between aerodynamics and vehicle dynamics has been depicted with a detailed methodology, accompanied by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of the wings and the full body of the car using STAR CCM+. Further the results has been discussed properly in the later sections of this paper. With a systematic approach, thoroughly done with several iterations on MATLAB followed by CFD simulations and analysis, the desired performance was accomplished.