Design and Numerical Analysis of an Under Tray Diffuser of a Formula Student Car for Performance Improvement

With the advancements of trends in Formula1 it has been quite clear that aerodynamics plays one of the most vital roles in the performance of the car. A typical aerodynamic package of a Formula1 car consists of rear wings, front wings and an under tray diffuser. This research paper is concerned with the development of an efficient under tray diffuser. The under tray diffuser is a shaped section of the car underbody to improve the aerodynamic properties of the car. Mainly it is used to generate maximum down force corresponding to minimum drag. Several studies have been carried out in recent decades to improve the vehicle performance, aerodynamic properties in particular. The present work deals with studying the performance of under tray diffuser by varying the geometric properties of the under tray diffuser such as Inlet angle, Outlet angle corresponding to varying ground clearances. Based on these changes 27 different design iterations are designed using CATIA V5 and further CFD is carried out in ANSYS Fluent to find out the best performing model. It is found from the simulation that the geometric model with Inlet angle of 3°, outlet angle of 10° and ground clearance 30mm provided the least drag to down force ratio and this design is considered as the best model having better aerodynamic properties. However, numerical model with Inlet angle 5°, outlet angle 16° and ground clearance 50mm gave poor results in terms of drag to down force ratio.