Race Car Aerodynamics - The Design Process of an Aerodynamic Package for the 2012 Chalmers Formula SAE Car 2013-01-0797
This paper describes the design process of a full aerodynamic package of a Formula SAE (FSAE) style race car. The meaning of a full aerodynamic package in this context is a front wing, a rear wing and a diffuser; the focus will however be on the wings. The vehicle for which the aerodynamic package is designed is the Chalmers Formula Student (CFS) 2012 FSAE car, but vehicle data logged from the CFS 2011 FSAE car was used during the design phase. This data was used to evaluate how the aerodynamic package will influence the behaviour of the vehicle, both in terms of lateral and longitudinal acceleration as well as fuel consumption, in order to determine whether or not an aerodynamic package can enhance the vehicle performance. The main tool used during the design process was numerical simulations (computational fluid dynamics, CFD) and special attention was paid to post-processing of these simulations. It was concluded that although the resolution of the simulations was relatively low, valuable insights on how the air flows over the vehicle was obtained using CFD. The manufactured aerodynamic package was also evaluated during pre-competition testing using an on-board data acquisition system as well as flow-visualisation tufts.
Citation: Rehnberg, S., Börjesson, L., Svensson, R., and Rice, J., "Race Car Aerodynamics - The Design Process of an Aerodynamic Package for the 2012 Chalmers Formula SAE Car," SAE Technical Paper 2013-01-0797, 2013, https://doi.org/10.4271/2013-01-0797. Download Citation
Author(s):
Sven Rehnberg, Lucas Börjesson, Robert Svensson, Jonathan Rice
Affiliated:
Chalmers Univ. of Technology
Pages: 9
Event:
SAE 2013 World Congress & Exhibition
ISSN:
0148-7191
e-ISSN:
2688-3627
Related Topics:
Computational fluid dynamics
Vehicle performance
Design processes
Racing vehicles
Fuel consumption
Aerodynamics
Data acquisition and handling
Vehicle acceleration
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