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Aerodynamic analysis of a LMP1-H racing car by using Solidworks Flow
Simulation
Conference Paper · December 2016
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International Conference on Applied Mechanics and Industrial Systems
(ICAMIS-Oman-2016),
6-8 December 2016, Muscat, Oman
Full Paper
Aerodynamic analysis of a LMP1-H racing car by using Solidworks
Flow Simulation
Albert Borettia,*, Andrew Ordysa and Sarim Al-Zubaidya
a
Military Technological College, Muscat, OMAN
* Corresponding author: E-mail address: [email protected].
Abstract
The paper reports on the use of integrated Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) tools
within an undergraduate teaching and learning (T&L) environment. Solidworks and the embedded CFD are powerful tools to
make students familiar with engineering design problems, in this case the definition within constraints of a body surface for
Drag (D) and Lift (L) forces, and the way to progress through testing of concepts and solutions. The activity also promotes the
understanding of the value of the details of a design, as geometries apparently very similar are shown to actually have very
different drag and lift forces, and the limitation of computational tools, both because of the physics, as separated flows are
difficult to be modelled, and the numeric, as proper mesh refinement and development of best practice approaches linked to
accurate experiments are crucial to make simulations useful.
Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics; Computer Aided Design; Teaching and Learning; Racing Cars; Solidworks
1. Project based learning in BEng (Hons) engine, powertrain and vehicle modules
The Military Technological College (MTC), Muscat, Oman, is a new institute that was established in 2013.
MTC‟s vision is to develop and adopt internationally recognized engineering programs with high caliber education
that will meet the requirements of specific military services and also assist the development of Oman [22]. This
paper examines the integration of engineering programs with training need analysis. MTC offers military and
academic training, and runs engineering degrees that have been validated by the University of Portsmouth (UoP),
UK since September 2014. The core building-blocks of the MTC BEng (Hons) program are, problem-centered
learning, upside-down curriculum, mathematics in context, design orientation, combined simulation, training and
laboratory studies. The strategy adopted in designing the program is suitable for providing the students with
lifelong transferable skills [10]. Specific engine, powertrain and vehicle modules are included in the BEng (Hons)
offer. Integrated Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) and Computational Fluid
Dynamic (CFD) activities have been designed to be included in these modules to capture students’ attention and
provide state-of-the-art teaching & learning (T&L) experiences.
2. Race Car Aerodynamics
The aerodynamic design of a racing car is performed to achieve, within the limits set by the sporting regulations,
the best compromise between low drag and high inverse lift or downforce [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. The optimum
compromise depends on the specific class of racing cars and fine tunings are requested on specific circuits. A
streamlined shape may produce low drag forces. This will translate in a low retarding force contrasting the
propulsive force delivered by the engine, and in case of hybrid racing cars, the engine and the kinetic energy
recovery system (KERS), turning into sharpest accelerations and higher top speeds. However, without any tuning
of the geometry to produce inverse lift or downforce, even if at the expenses of a higher drag force, the car will
not be able to properly use the tires when cornering, and the total lap time will be compromised by the low speed
during corners. Tires may transfer through the contact surfaces tangential forces that in the normal operating
conditions are proportional to the vertical force pushing the tires to the ground. Increased downforce also reduces
the braking space in addition to permit faster cornering speeds.
As the proximity to the ground and the relative motion between the car and the ground is of great importance,
this design is professionally conducted by using wind tunnels with moving ground and wheels coupled to CFD
simulations in addition to full scale, road tests with extensive telemetry. Here Solidworks Flow Simulation [8], a
simple add-on module of the Solidworks 3D CAD package, is used to study the flow around Le Mans racing series
prototype class 1 hybrid (LMP1-H) geometries [9,10,11]. The grab-a-cad models are very useful starting points
for student projects, as the shape of a car is built by converting public domain images of the car in the many parts
making a car body assembly. As the modelled car body looks like the true car but it is not, this will permit the
lecturer to bring the attention of the students towards the value of the details, triggering phenomena as pressure
and shear stress forces and flow separations along surfaces that ultimately dictates the lift performances.
The fully embedded, intuitive, CFD tool enables quick simulations of the air flow around the car body with
rotating wheels on a moving ground, and efficiently analyze the effects on drag and lift forces within the limitations
of undergraduate T&L environment. The protocol is indeed aimed at setting up best practices for aerodynamic
simulations during undergraduate design activities to create optimized products with superior aerodynamic
performance.
Detailed flow descriptions are considered for different modelling alternatives. Despite the relative simplicity of
the Solidworks Flow approach if compared with applications of other CFD packages, that however often also fail
at resolving flow separations and require fine tuning and best practices to get the agreement with wind tunnel
experiments, the aerodynamic simulations produce realistic representations of the flow in real world conditions.
While estimations of drag forces would ultimately turn close to the values measured in wind tunnel tests [12]
and inferred from race car telemetry [13] and lap time simulations [14, 15, 16, 17, 18], the lift forces are more
difficult to be computed with accuracy, being the result strongly dependent on ground effects and more sensitive
to flow separations and proper detailing, as unaffordable to resolve within an undergraduate T&L environment.
Sample wind tunnel experiments (from [19]) are shown in Figure 1. In the preliminary preparation to the
activity, basic racing car theory has to be provided to students. Then, the real wind tunnel measurements have to
be detailed before the interactive design and virtual wind tunnel experiment activity is run.
Figure 1 - Sample wind tunnel experiments (images from [19]). Understanding the real wind tunnel operation is crucial to model
the virtual wind tunnel.
3. Solidworks Flow Simulation
The Solidworks Flow Simulation approach is described in detail in [20] and only briefly summarized here.
Solidworks Flow Simulation is a Concurrent CFD analysis software fully embedded in the mechanical design
environment. The CFD software solves the Navier-Stokes equations. Simple models are used for turbulence. Quite
basic models are also used for other relevant physical phenomena. Solidworks Flow Simulation places accent on
dealing with geometric complexity more than emphasizing on the physical models. Solidworks Flow Simulation
also follow is own way to mesh generation, differencing schemes and wall treatment, adopting Cartesian-based
meshes.
Solidworks Flow Simulation uses an immersed body mesh where the cells can intersect the boundary between
solid and fluid. The mesh is defined as a set of cuboid cells. These elements are orientated along the Cartesian
coordinates to cover all the computational domain. The cells that are intersected by the boundaries are called “cut-
cells”. These cells are treated in a special way depending on the specific boundary. Cells located fully in solid
bodies are called “solid cells”. Cells located fully in the fluid are called “fluid cells”. Cells that intersect the
immersed boundary are called “partial cells”. The simplest partial cell is made up of a fluid and a solid control
volume. Each control volume is fully solid or fully fluid. Mesh generation is started by dividing the rectangular
computational domain into a set of rectangular cells (cuboids). The mesh is then refined by splitting each cuboid
into 8 cuboids. Criteria can be defined for each solid body as curvature, narrow channels and small features, or
according to flow gradients. In Cartesian based grids, a huge number of cells are wasted when dealing with
complex boundaries. Therefore, Cartesian based grids are well known to suffer to provide adequate resolution
approaching the walls.
In the fluid, Solidworks Flow Simulation solves the Favre averaged Navier-Stokes mass, momentum and
energy conservation equations:
These equations are closed by the state equation for the fluid and empirical equations for the properties. The
turbulent Reynolds stresses and heat flux appearing in the equations are modelled through the k-ε formulation of
[21]. This introduces two additional transport equations:
The Reynolds stresses and the heat flux are defined as follows:
The turbulent viscosity is determined from:
The values of the model constants and the expressions for the damping functions may be found in [21].
Approaching the boundaries, the area of major troubles for the Cartesian based grids, where resolution is already
typically poor, Solidworks Flow Simulation then uses a Two-Scale Wall Function (2SWF) to couple the solution
of the flow far from the layer bounding a real wall surface and this layer. A “thin” or a “thick” boundary layer
treatment is considered depending on the number of cells across the boundary layer. Composing the two is
necessary to address intermediate cases.
The above physical and computational methods are relatively simple and computationally inexpensive, but they
are also very well-known to fail for the complex flows that are a constant feature of racing car aerodynamics. Wall
functions and boundary layer approaches may provide wrong results for complex flows, and poor mesh resolution
does not certainly help. Therefore, we do not expect the Solidworks Flow Simulations being able to capture all the
relevant physical flow features that determine the pressure and shear stress components of drag and lift forces over
the car body surfaces within normal hardware limitations of standard desktop computers. Nevertheless,
Solidworks and Solidworks Flow Simulations may still be used within a T&L activity, turning the computational
limitations toward a further learning outcome.
4. Results and Discussion
Sample computational results are presented in Figures 2 to 4. Solidworks Flow permits to set-up a working
CFD model quickly. In the approach we propose to students, the car body has to be defined as one part, then the
wheels, front and rear, have to be defined as two more parts. Finally, the road must be imported as another part
defined as the parallelepiped that is supporting the car. This bring the students closer to understand the operation
of a wind tunnel, that is ultimately what they want simulate.
Figure 2 – Images of the 3D CAD/CFD model of an Audi R18 LMP1-H racing car (CAD model downloaded from reference [11] and
modified to better reproduce the details of the racing car fitted on a moving belt in a virtual wind tunnel) and sample computational results
for surface pressure obtained by using Solidworks Flow Simulation. Computational domain made of 2,000,000 cells. No selective mesh
refinement. Reference air speed 100 m/s. Laminar and turbulent flow.
The CFD simulation wizards then build a box around the car and the road to be resized to include the walls of
a hypothetical wind tunnel and a thin slice of the ground. In this case, the initial and ideal wall conditions are to
be set equal to the air flow velocity. Nothing else if needed, as the road, wheels and car body surfaces are all treated
as slip walls, and this reduces the computational effort. Only post processing is required.
One major issue is to deal with flow openings, as these boundary conditions are everything but trivial. These
flow openings include at least the engine air intake, on center top of the car, the engine cooling, on the front, and
the fresh air supply to cockpit, two on center front, with the sides air discharge also accounted [19]. The engine
exhaust is also relevant. Even more than that, a proper refinement of the mesh is needed in the most sensitive areas.
This may be quite troublesome, as this is not achieved automatically with the initial mesh settings. Furthermore,
mesh refinement is also a trigger to cope with a failing mathematical model of flow separations.
What need to be told to students is that the mathematical model has issue, as the model is in principle valid
only for attached flow without separations. Unfortunately, a racing car suffers of many flow separations. Then, it
has to be added that the numerical method, i.e. the discretization method, the solution algorithm and mostly the
grid from a user’s perspective, may capture some of the flow details only if properly defined. Local grid refinement
is a very important feature of CFD simulations. Some flow feature may be eventually simulated only if properly
triggered in the numerical model. Localized flow features like separations are hardly managed by any CFD solver
without a significant amount of specific CFD expertise and the ad-hoc tuning that may only follow availability of
good experimental data.
Figure 3 – Images of the 3D CAD/CFD model of a Toyota TS030 LMP1-H racing car (CAD model downloaded from reference [9] and
modified to better reproduce the details of the racing car fitted on a moving belt in a virtual wind tunnel) and sample computational results
for surface pressure obtained by using Solidworks Flow Simulation. Computational domain made of 2,000,000 cells. No selective mesh
refinement. Reference air speed 100 m/s. Laminar and turbulent flow.
Within an undergraduate T&L environment, higher level concepts of mathematical and numerical modelling
have only to be introduce. Students must only understand that any model has limitations, without a proper
validation and calibration is useless, as the real world differs considerably from the theoretical world of the
computations.
If FD is the aerodynamic drag force, ½∙ρ∙v2∙CD∙A, with ρ air density, v speed of the car, CD drag coefficient and
A reference area, and FL is the aerodynamic drag force, ½∙ρ∙v2∙CL∙A, with CL drag coefficient, the aerodynamic
drag and lift forces are computed by integrating pressure and shear stress components over the car body surface.
More than the flow details, the students are requested to focus on the drag and lift coefficients that synthetically
measure the ability of the car design to produce faster cars along straight lines or cars much quicker cornering.
Unfortunately, the simple approach usually delivers drag coefficients not that far from the expected, but lift
coefficients differ considerably. Nevertheless, as the post processing is made simple as simple is the pre-
processing, more quantitative drag computations, and mostly qualitative lift computations plus the detailed flow
fields and trajectories of particles around the car may still help student to achieve their goal of understanding the
best trade-off between a streamlined body and a body delivering significant downforce to better use the tires when
cornering.
From [12] the wind tunnel measurements with moving wheels and ground show the drag coefficient, front
wheels’ coefficient of lift, and rear wheels’ coefficient of lift. The CDx and CLx figures, i.e. the coefficient of drag
or lift multiplied by the reference area, are 0.85, -1.80, and -1.59 respectively. Therefore, by assuming a frontal
area of 1.8 m2 we get a coefficient of drag CD of 0.47 and a total coefficient of lift C L of -1.88, for a lift-to-drag
(L/D) ratio of 4:1, and a front biased 53% front wheels and 47% rear wheels’ lift balance. These are overall typical
values of LMP-1 racing cars in configurations for fast circuits. Tuning for higher downforce as requested in slow
circuits may result in a larger lift-to-drag ratio obtained at the expenses of more drag.
Figure 4 –Particles flow and trajectories results obtained by using Solidworks Flow Simulation on the Toyota TS030 LMP1-H racing car
(CAD model downloaded from reference [9] and modified to better reproduce the details of the racing car fitted on a moving belt in a virtual
wind tunnel). Computational domain made of 2,000,000 cells. No selective mesh refinement. Reference air speed 100 m/s. Laminar and
turbulent flow.
Given the simplified nature of the hypothetical wind tunnel experiments simulated by CFD and the differences
in between the modelled car body and the actual car body (grab-a-cad models [9, 10, 11] are not expected to
properly detail a real car) even after few corrections, it is not expected from the proposed activity to produce
accurate numbers especially for the lift force and the balance front to rear of the lift force. Part of the teaching and
learning activity is also the opportunity to learn about limitations of a specific tool, and nevertheless be able to
design a better product. In the most part of the modelling activities performed by students, involving CAD model
refinement and CFD model development and optimization, within the constraint of up to maximum 2,000,000
computational cells for the limitation of the hardware, computed drag coefficients C D were in the range 0.35-0.38,
with similar values for the lift coefficient CL.
5. Conclusions
We have shown the challenges and opportunities of using integrated Computer Aided Design (CAD) and
Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) tools within an undergraduate teaching and learning (T&L) environment.
Solidworks and the embedded CFD are powerful tools to make students familiar with engineering design
problems as the definition, within constraints, of a car body surface for Drag (D) and Lift (L) forces, and the way
to progress through testing of concepts and solutions.
The activity is also intended to promote the understanding of the value of the details of a design, as geometries
apparently very similar were shown to actually have very different drag and especially lift forces, and the limitation
of computational tools, that only provide an approximate reconstruction of the real world.
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List of symbols
A = area
C = constant
CD = drag coefficient
CL = lift coefficient
f = function
F = force
H = total enthalpy
h = enthalpy
k = kinetic energy
P = pressure or production
Pr = Prandtl number
Q = heat source
q = heat-flux
S = viscous strain-rate
t = time
u = velocity
v = speed of the car
x = coordinate
ρ = density
µ = viscosity coefficient
σ = diffusion coefficient
τ = viscous stress
ε = dissipation rate
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