A little town called Maranello...

After a recent business trip to Italy, I decided to spend an additional day in the Bologna area before flying back to Germany. My only real goal for the day was to spend as much time in Maranello as possible before heading back to the airport. After sleeping in for a few hours to gain back some much needed rest, I set off west from the center of Bologna. As fate would have it, I missed the turnoff for the Autostrada to Modena (the quickest route) but immediately saw road signs for Maranello, among many other small towns. I may have added 30 or 40 minutes to my trip by taking "back roads" but it was well worth it and I'd recommend this route to anyone. I've traveled to countless places around Europe over the past year or so, and this particular region of Italy is definitely high on the "most beautiful" list.

After passing through seven or eight little villages, I finally made it to Maranello. Everything here is dripping with Ferrari. It's as if the entire town is built around the Ferrari plant. Speaking of the factory, it's a exclusive deal to get a tour and unfortunately I had to settle for just the Ferrari Gallery. Hard to call it settling, really:

The Allard J2X

One of my favorite race cars of all time is the Allard J2X. While it was never successful in any of it's races, it was years beyond the competition in terms of aerodynamic design. Despite the fact that the J2X was capable of far superior levels of downforce compared to rival offerings at Porsche, Peugeot, and Jaguar, a massively underpowered engine would ultimately hamper overall performance. Developed in the early 1990s for the Group C World Sports Car championship, the J2X never saw much racing action. After the Group C Championship dissolved in 1993, the Allard was retired from professional racing forever.

You can read more about the Allard J2X here at Mulsanne's Corner.

I've wanted to model and examine the flow around the Allard for a few years now. I've finally managed to create a model that bears a slight resemblance in both shape and overall dimensions. Of note, I'll be using the latest version of CFdesign for my simulation. This is of particular interest due to the many very small edges in my Allard CAD model. The latest meshing technology in version 10 of CFdesign should make the simulation setup a piece of cake...

Visualizing Natural Convection

To help show the effects of natural convection on fluid flow (buoyancy-driven flow), I've modeled a simple coffee mug with a spinner positioned directly above. The spinner is free to rotate about its axis and will begin to turn as vertical air velocity increases. I've assumed a heat generation of 300 Watts inside the fluid in the mug (water).

No need to get into the complexities of how microwaves work to heat things, I just want to see the effect of the hot mug on air flow, but if you must know: About Microwave Ovens

Fun with Formula Cars

I've uploaded a few YouTube videos showing flow and pressure results around my simplified formula car... enjoy!

Particle Traces

Engine Intake and Radiator Flow

Pressure Profiles

Formula 1 CFD

Formula 1 is without a doubt the pinnacle of motorsport aerodynamics. Between extensive usage of both wind tunnels and very high end computing platforms, teams are constantly trying to one-up each other in the quest for maximum performance. Modern F1 cars are anything but the pure, smooth, handsome machines from yesteryear. Shod with flip-ups, viking horns, barge boards, turning vanes, nose cone holes, and hundreds of other devices aimed to shape, direct, and optimize airflow, Formula 1 cars appear as if they could poke an eye out from 50 meters away. While cars from the '80s and '90s may be more visually pleasing to the eyes, advances in CFD allow modern vehicles to navigate a track as fast or faster with substantially less engine power.

Formula 1 - 1990

Formula 1 - 2008

Particularly in the last few years, all teams have been investing great sums of money in superior computers to perform their CFD needs faster and more accurately. Once the realm of dreams, some full car simulations consist of 50-100 million cells. Rumor has it that one team has experimented with simulations exceeding 1 billion cells. Naturally, this computing power comes at a price, but with teams like Renault investing approximately 50 million USD in their CFD solutions, anything seems possible...

While only a select few have access to a machine with such staggering computing power, smaller scale studies can allow engineers with average workstations to take a look into what makes an F1 car so fast.

Air Particle Traces

Air Particle Traces

Side Profile View - Air Velocity

Side Profile View - Air Velocity

Pressure Profiles (Including Ground Plane)

Front Iso View of Pressure

Rear Iso View of Pressure

Aerodynamic Stall

If you are somewhat familiar with basic aerodynamics, you've probably heard of the term "stall". Wikipedia, the ever-so-accurate online database of all knowledge, past and present, has some great information on stalls and how they relate to both air travel and jet engines.

The basic explanation of stall is when an airfoil loses it's ability to create lift due to an angle of attack that is too great. Check out the information below ... (at your own risk for you Wikipedia haters :) )

Flight Stall

Compressor Stall

I've put together a simple 2D wing profile to show what happens to the air flow around the wing as the angle of attack is increased slowly from 0 to 30 degrees. Air separation is clearly visible through looking at velocity over the wing, the reduction in negative pressure on the top of the wing clearly shows the loss of lift, and air turbulence helps to illustrate the onset of the separation zone. Enjoy...

A summary of the lift and drag forces versus angle of attack is shown below. The wing I created has a critical angle of about 14 degrees.

Introduction to Racecar Engineering - FSAE

Formula SAE programs are like factories for churning out great engineers. For many young engineering students, FSAE is their first real world engineering experience where they must apply the things they've learned and work efficiently with team members. In addition to having their noses stuffed in books and their brains struggling to keep up with the information, they spend a year (sometimes two) constantly thinking about their design, their deadlines, bringing it all together and praying for success.

Fortunately, there is no real penalty for failure at the FSAE competitions, but frankly, I've never met an engineer who didn't thrive off of winning. It's heartbreaking to witness a team that has put in so much effort for such a long time compete well in all of the events, only to watch their car break down in the grueling endurance race, ruining all hopes for a top ten finish. On average, only 35-40% of teams are able to finish the 22 kilometer endurance event each year.

Lots of information here about the Formula Design series. As of this year, there are nine Formula competitions worldwide.

Helsinki Polytechnik '07

Virginia Tech '07

Cal Poly Pomona '07

University of Western Australia '07

TU Graz '07

Part of the competition involves several static events like a sales presentation and a design competition. Some sales presentation videos from Virginia Tech over the past few years...

2005

2006


2007