Rear Wing Design 1
Analysis by Russell Harrison
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Geometry
This rear wing design was sent to me by a young budding engineer from Spain
named Mr Bernat Carreras. The model was cleaned by Keith Young and further
cleaned in CFX. This was his first attempt at wing design and he had limited CAD
experience. However, it was agreed to run a CFD analysis on the rear wing
design. I believe the airfoils are not based on published designs.
There were clearly a number of design issues with the rear wings, including the
severity of the camber designed in to the airfoils, which was believed to lead
to early flow separation.
Image 1 shows the rear wing geometry after geometry cleaning.
Mesh
A mesh picture is currently not available, but will try and post one if anyone wants to see one. The mesh parameters applied to the model included refined inflation layers for more accurate boundary layer analysis. The mesh engine used was the default AFI mesher using triangular surface mesh elements. The mesh data, after volume meshing, is given below:
| Mesh Modes: Volume = AFI, Surface = Delaunay Total Number of Elements: 1,045,075 Total Number of Tetrahedrons: 851,941 Total Number of Prisms: 191,520 Total Number of Pyramids: 1614 Total Number of Faces: 54,828 |
Flow Conditions
A simple analysis of the rear wing was carried out, ignoring any body interactions with the Formula 1 vehicle. The results from analysis can therefore only be used for initial design of the wing system, and all body interactions must be included and analyzed in further design modifications. The flow velocity at inlet was set at 62.22 m/s (140 mph, 224 KPH) and this was also applied as an global initialisation velocity . All walls of the fluid domain were set to free slip and a no-slip condition applied to the bodies surface.
Fluid Properties:
- Material: Air Ideal Gas (constant Cp)
- Molar Mass = 28.96 Kg Kmol -1
- Dynamic Viscosity = 1.79e-5 Kg m -1 s -1
Simulation Properties:
- Domain Motion: Stationary
- Reference Pressure = 1e5 Pa
- Fluid Temperature = 288 K (this can be cha5ged and re-run to suit a specific circuit the wing will be run on)
- Turbulence Model = SST
- Turbulence = Medium Intensity and Eddy Viscosity Ratio
Solution
The residual target for convergence was set to e-4 at an RMS type. This was achieved during solution. Total Run times was 1 hour, 39 Minutes, 18.468 Seconds.
Results
It can be seen from the
results (image 2 and 3) that the initial concern of wing stall is clearly
apparent. The small flap has completely stalled as has the trailing edge of the
main top element. This, obviously greatly reducing the negative lift (downforce)
also brings the penalty of increased form drag. It is also clearly visible from
images 3, 4 and 5 that with the top front element of the wing system only the
upper surface is experience downforce producing effects (positive pressure),
however, at the lower surface of the element positive pressure is also present
(thus canceling out the positive pressure of the top surface). This lower
surface positive pressure is caused by the bi-plane phenomenon, in that the wing
elements are vertically to close to each other . There is also noticeably early
separation of the thin aerofoil profile of the top front wing element
(separation occurs around half the chord)
The poor design of the end plates and positioning of the wing elements has led
to large vortex production, the effects of these vortices is to produce a
downwash in the area between the them, which results in reduced negative lift
(this is high for low aspect ratio wings, since the vortices are closer to the
wing) and small for high aspect ratio wings).
Force Data
Downforce = 1285.26 N, Drag = 374.543 N, Pitching moment = 122.388 Nm
