Study of the Vortex Flow over a Generic Open-Wheel Race-Car

Open wheel race cars present a challenge to the aerodynamic designer because of the numerous wakes and vortices created by the various body components. The present study follows the development of a high-downforce race car and investigates possible vortex manipulations to increase its aerodynamic efficiency. The tools used for this study involved computational fluid dynamics and small-scale wind tunnel testing. Once the basic geometry of the racecar was finalized, cost effective measures were tested to improve its downforce to drag ratio. As an example, by fine tuning the position of different body components, such as the rear wing location relative to the underfloor diffuser exit, vehicle’s aerodynamic performance can be modified. The results of both the wind tunnel and the computational investigations indicated that such simple modifications can positively improve the race-car downforce to drag ratio. Also, once the baseline vehicle’s geometry was frozen and observing that the largest aerodynamic surface on the car is its underfloor, different vortex generators attached below the underfloor were tested to increase the vehicle’s downforce. The above modifications between the baseline racecar, and the car with the underfloor vortex generators resulted in a gain of 8.12% in downforce and 8.24% in lift to drag ratio.