Aerodynamic Design and Analysis of a Vehicle Prototype Racing Sport

• Main Authors: Rodrigues, Antonio Flavio Aires, Gertz, Luiz Carlos, Cervieri, André, Berto, Lucas Figueiró
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0148-7191; 2688-3627
• DOI: 10.4271/2013-36-0326

The purpose of this study was to develop a body of a competition vehicle, the sports prototype category. This category has the aerodynamics as one of its main features, so much of their good performance depends on your body. The project proposal was generating an initial 3D CAD geometry, based on studies and existing vehicles. After analysis of the initial model, modifications were proposed in order to achieve better results for a competition vehicle. The simulation of the airflow over the 3D model of the body was performed in three steps: generation of geometry in SolidWorks CAD program, discretization of the model and the limited domain around it, using mesh generation program ICEM, and resolution of the flow in program of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), ANSYS (FLUENT). The turbulence model used in this work has two equations, which models the turbulent kinetic energy k and dissipation ε. The studies allowed the observation that modification brought improvements in aerodynamic performance (high negative lift, without significant increase in drag coefficient), and also some proposals which showed no gain or even hurt the features of the model.