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A modern benchmark for passenger cars - DrivAer model - has provided significant contributions to aerodynamics-related topics in automotive engineering, where three categories of passenger cars have been successfully represented. However, a reference model for high-performance car configurations has not been considered appropriately yet. Technical knowledge in motorsport is also restricted due to competitiveness in performance, reputation and commercial gains. The consequence is a shortage of open-access material to be used as technical references for either motorsport community or academic research purposes. In this paper, a parametric assessment of race car aerodynamic devices are presented into four groups of studies. These are: (i) forebody strakes (dive planes), (ii) front bumper splitter, (iii) rear-end spoiler, and (iv) underbody diffuser.

The aerodynamic development of road car have been progressing as engineering tools become more accurate and feasible. Wind tunnels more similar to the real environment, as well as computational techniques with improved modelling and hardware, lead the development of aerodynamic applications to focus on details. In this scenario, exhaust gases may jump from ordinary residuals to useful flow for aerodynamic control. The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of exhaust tailpipe position on drag coefficient over a 3D realistic road car model. Therefore, the main contributions of this paper are (i) to present the influence of tailpipe position over the car, as well as (ii) to provide results that may support technical decision concerning performance and design targets on a road car project.

Since the Brazilian government established the Inovar-Auto programme in 2012, the automotive industry has pursued tax savings by signing up for the programme. This new plan (from 2013 to 2017) has three main objectives: fortification of the industry and domestic market; increase incentives for investment and innovation; and enhance energy efficiency of vehicles produced in Brazil. For instance, manufacturers can gain up to 2% extra in IPI tax credits (aside 30% from Inovar-Auto achievements) by producing even more fuel-efficient models. In relation to energy efficiency, the aerodynamic drag over a vehicle contributes to the share of energy requested to promote its movement in high speed. Thus, the drag forces are the major reasons of fuel consumption. In this context, this paper presents a profile comparison of Hatch 2015 cars models produced in Brazil, in regards to drag and geometry features as roof end angle, rear slant angle and rear-end spoiler.

The automotive industry pursues to decrease the fuel consumption of road cars. As the Brazilian government, many countries around the world incentive the industry to achieve such reduction. The purpose of this paper is an aerodynamic concept for drag reduction of fastback car. To represent a car model, the DrivAer Fastback two-dimensional profile has been adopted as baseline. The momentum transfer via blowing or suction jet applied on the rear car are investigated by means of CFD technique. From the quantitative point of view, the suction jet on rear car profile does not seem to be a way to yield drag reduction. The blowing jet at higher speed points to smaller global drag than baseline profile. Despite this positive first conclusion, the correction of drag results (removing jet momentum from the global drag) points to higher drag of profile car than the baseline car in all three cases.

Fuel consumption of road cards has been a main issue for the global automotive industry. Engineering tools, such as wind tunnels and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), have been employed for vehicle design, intending to achieve more aerodynamic efficiency. However, wind tunnels are very expensive facilities. Conversely, CFD technique rises as the best cost-effective tool for solutions on aerodynamics. This paper presents the influences of numerics and brief analysis of the intrinsic turbulent flow over a 3D realistic car model. The objective is to provide a significant cost-benefit of numerical parameters to the automotive industry in the development of road cars. Besides the validation from an unsteady-state simulation over a full car domain, the simplification of the domain by half and the steady-state regime were found to provide an acceptable approach for automotive simulation.