New regulations introduced by the Fédération Internationale de
l’Automobile (FIA) for the 2026 Formula 1 season mark the first
instance of active flow control methods being endorsed in Formula 1 competition.
While active methods have demonstrated significant success in airfoil
development, their broader application to grounded vehicle aerodynamics remains
unexplored. This research investigates the effectiveness of trapped vortex
cavity (TVC) technology in both active and passive flow controls, applied to a
NACA0012 airfoil and an inverted three-element airfoil from a Formula 1 model.
The investigation is conducted using numerical methods to evaluate the
aerodynamic performance and potential of TVC in this paper. In the
single-airfoil case, a circular cavity is placed along the trailing edge (TE) on
the suction surface; for the three-element airfoils, the cavity is positioned on
each airfoil to determine the optimum location. The results show that the
presence of a cavity, particularly with active flow control, significantly
improves the lift-to-drag ratio
(CL/CD) for both the
single airfoil and the three-element airfoils. A maximum enhancement of 1160%
was recorded for the single airfoil, while the three-element airfoils saw an
improvement of 313% compared to their original configurations. However, when the
TVC was placed in positions other than the TE of the mid-airfoil, a performance
reduction was observed, even with active blowing applied. The passive flow
control approach, which requires no additional energy input, yielded a modest
improvement of 3.52% for the NACA0012 airfoil. However, passive control
underperformed due to unstable vortex interactions with each airfoil element for
the inverted three-element airfoil case. Even with optimal placement and
geometrical modifications, the maximum
CL/CD ratio for
passive control was only 96% of the original
CL/CD of the
unmodified three-element airfoils, suggesting that passive flow control is less
effective here compared to active flow control.