Effects of Active Aerodynamic Wings on Handling Performance of High-Speed Vehicles

In this research, active aerodynamic wings are investigated using numerical simulation in order to improve vehicle handling performance under emergency scenarios, such as tight cornering maneuvers at high speeds. Air foils are selected and analyzed to determine the basic geometric features of aerodynamic wings. Built upon the airfoil analysis, the 3-D aerodynamic wing model is developed. Then, the virtual aerodynamic wings are assembled with the 3-D vehicle model. The resulting 3-D geometry model is used for aerodynamic analysis based on numerical simulation using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software package. The CFD-based simulation data and the vehicle dynamic model generated are combined to study the effects of active aerodynamic wings on handling performance of high-speed vehicles. The systematic numerical simulation method and achieved results may provide design guidance for the development of active aerodynamic wings for high-speed road vehicles.