INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 8, ISSUE 11, NOVEMBER 2019 ISSN 2277-8616

Aerodynamic Enhancement Of Formula Sae Car

Using Split Rear Wings
Seralathan S, Baji Babavali S K, Guru Venkat I, Hariram V, Micha Premkumar T

Abstract :Formula SAE car with single type wing on the front and the rear wing generates downforce and high drag. Aerodynamic loads acting on high
speed Formula SAE car play an important role on its dynamic behavior which results with decreased fuel efficiency and a lesser downforce. In order to
improve the aerodynamics Formula SAE car, split type rear wings are used to which produce a lesser drag and more downforce comparatively with
respect to single type rear wing. Therefore, the focus of this study is to simulate Formula SAE car with split rear wings to improve its aerodynamic
behavior. Simulations are carried out using STAR CCM +. The numerical results obtained showed that split rear wings reduced the drag by 12% and
increased the downforce by 38%. This would benefit the car to increase its cornering speed and improve the overall fuel efficiency.

Index Terms : Formula SAE car, split wing, aerodynamics, downforce, CFD
——————————  ——————————

1. INTRODUCTION
Formula One is the motorsports event currently referred to as
FIA Formula One World Championship. Ever increasing
competition, changes in regulation and need to cut cost by
reduced track testing together necessitate the dependence on
computer simulations for various aspects of performance
enhancement. Aerodynamics play a prominent role to success
in Formula One motorsport and huge amount of funds are
spent annually on the research and development. The
aerodynamic design involves two primary concerns. Firstly,
creating negative lift or downforce to facilitate to push the car‟s
tyre onto the road and enhance the cornering force. It is
known that downforce is the load that pushes upper body
structure of car to make added grip on the ground thereby
decreasing the slip between the ground and wheels. Secondly,
minimizing the drag caused by turbulence which act to slow
down the car. Formula SAE contest involves undergraduate
students whom are likely to design and build high performance
Formula SAE car. Again, aerodynamic factor is very crucial
and the important parameters involved in the aerodynamics
are lift, downforce, drag force and coefficient of drag as shown
in Fig. 1. Higher downforce lead to an improved aerodynamic
performance of Formula SAE car. Lift is a load that lifts the car
up as air flow from in front of the car at high speeds.
Generally, the lift for a Formula SAE car occur from
underneath of the car which lifts the vehicle and cause
slip

motoring performance and to improve stability during

between ground and wheels (refer Fig, 1). Further, this affects
the aerodynamic performance of the car. Drag force is a load
that acts in the direction opposite to car velocity and reduces
the car velocity (refer Fig. 1). In order to achieve high
performance, Formula SAE car is loaded with aerodynamic
components like diffuser, rear wing and front wing. These will
decrease the drag force and lift. But, lift and drag force are
relative to each other. Therefore, an optimum design is
required to derive the best of the lift and drag force. Rear wing
helps to achieve good handling in fast corners besides good
acceleration. A typical rear wing is shown in Fig. 2. But, rear
wing of the car creates the most drag and it contributes nearly
a third of the car‟s total downforce. As flow happens over the
rear wing, its profile disturbs the flow causing drag force. Even
though drag force is typically less than downforce, it impairs
the top speed limit and cause vehicle to utilize more fuel to get
the car through the air. Based on the literature review, it is
understood that rear wing is designed in a way to enhance the
———————————————
 Seralathan S, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science,
Chennai 603 103, India.
E- mail: siva.seralathan@gmail.com
 Baji Babavali S K, Department of Mechanical Engineering,Hindustan
Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai, India.
 Guru Venkat I, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hindustan
Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai, India.
 Hariram V, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering ,
Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai, India.
 Micha Premkumar T, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical
Engineering , Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, India

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cornering by generating large downforce. Recently, to assist in
the development of aerodynamically enabled Formula SAE
car, almost all teams use some CFD software packages.
Aerodynamic study involving Formula SAE car was
numerically investigated by Sneh Hetawal et al. [1] to minimize
the drag and improve the stability of SAE car by using wings
or spoilers. Similar work was also carried out by Vivek
Muralidharan et al. [2] by optimizing the design of rear and
front wings and reported an improved performance. Lee Wen
Yew et al. [3] analyzed the effects of aerodynamic package
comprising two element front wing, single element front wing,
and diffuser model, on improving the performance of Taylor‟s
Formula SAE Car using k-ε realizable turbulence model. Both,
the diffuser and front wing and configurations produced higher
lift to drag ratio, and higher down force proving the efficacy of
the aerodynamic design modifications in improving the race
car performance. Earlier, aerodynamic optimization of the
Zakspeed Formula One racing car involving the rear end,
centre part, and front end of the car body was investigated by
Gerhardt and Kramer [4]. Similar study was also performed by
Mohammad Arief Dharmawan et al. [5]. Several studies were
performed by researchers involving multi-element wing [6],
and three stage rear wing [7] with the intention of improving
the aerodynamic performance. Based on the literature review
[1-13], it is understood that rear wings enhance the motoring
performance and improve stability during cornering by
generating large downforce. Therefore, the focus of this study
is to simulate a Formula SAE car with split wings to improve its
aerodynamic behavior. Simulations are carried out using
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STAR CCM+ and the comparison is made with a model having capture flow physics. About 2.5L each is maintained at lateral
single type wing. side from the symmetry plane. Also, 2L is maintained in the
upper side from ground level. These details of the
computational domain are illustrated in Fig. 4. The volume
mesh in the computational domain is made with polyhedral
cells. Star CCM+ suggest users in deploying polyhedral cells to
ensure a balanced solutions involving multipart mesh
generation. The volume mesh also includes prism boundary
layers near the wall regions as these layers are necessary to
accurately capture the flow physics around boundaries of the
Formula SAE car. Figure 5 shows the closer view of mesh
generated. As can be seen in Fig. 5, four prism layers are
generated in the near wall regions. Non dimensional distance,
Fig 1. Aerodynamics parameters i.e., y+ less than 200 is maintained as it is good enough for the
simulation using automatic wall treatment [14-19]. Hence, the
polyhedral mesh in tandem with prism layers generated,
create a well refined volume mesh that accurately simulate to
calculate the aerodynamic forces acting on Formula SAE car.
Figure 6 shows the closer view of the split rear wing. Grid
Fig 2. Typical split rear wing independent test is carried out to ensure that results are not
mesh dependent. Table 1 lists the outcome of the grid
2 NUMERICAL METHODOLOGY independence test. It can be seen that the drag force at 1.7
Rear wing in Formula SAE car comprises a transverse board million is deviating from the values obtained with 2.1 million
shaped like an aero plane wing turned upside down with wing cells. However, the deviation between these values is very
end plates fixed to its end as shown in Fig. 3. As can be seen less (≤ 1%). Therefore, 1.7 million cells are considered for
in Fig. 3, the rear wing is fixed on the rear part of Formula SAE further analysis for Formula SAE car. The continuity equation
car generates downforce to keep the moving car against the is expressed as
ground thereby the grip force of the rear tyres enhances. This ( ) ... (1)
results in improvement of cornering performance, stability at
high speeds and acceleration performance. On the other The momentum equation is expressed as
hand, corresponding to square of speed, drag occurs in ( ) ( ) ( ̅̅̅̅̅̅̅)
direction opposite to Formula SAE car‟s running direction.
However, by optimizing the shape of rear wing, it is possible to ... (2)
achieve both reduced drag and improved downforce in where
Formula SAE car. The Formula SAE car model, as shown in
Fig. 3, is made according to the FIA 2009 rules and ( ) ...
regulations using Solidworks®. The software used for CFD (3)
simulations of all models is Star CCM+. After ensuing design
changes in the rear wing, the model is imported into Star
CCM+ as IGES file. These importing processes generate ̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ ( )
automatically the surfaces or regions on the car model. The
Formula SAE car model is kept in rectangular block (i.e., ... (4)
computational domain) that sectioned the car into half, making
a plane of symmetry. As the Formula SAE car profile is TABLE 1
symmetrical, only the forces acting on half of the car is to be GRID INDEPENDENCE TEST
No of Cells
studied. All dimension described in the computational domain (millions)`
Drag force (N) Deviation (%)
as illustrated in Fig. 4 are expressed as a function of length of 1.7 1095 ---
car (L). The inlet boundary of computational domain is placed 2.1 1084 1
two car lengths (i.e., 2L) ahead from nose of the car and outlet 2.4 1081 1.28
boundary is kept at five car lengths (5L) from back of the car to 2.8 1079 1.46

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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 8, ISSUE 11, NOVEMBER 2019 ISSN 2277-8616

Fig 3. Formula SAE car model

Fig 4. Computational domain

Fig 5. Closer view of mesh Fig 6. Rear wings with split wings

3D steady state numerical investigations are carried out and relaxation factor 0.10 for pressure and 0.30 for velocity. This is
the flow is considered as turbulent flow. k-ω turbulence model, done to avoid divergence of the solution. Subsequently, after
a two equations based model is deployed to achieve closure 150 iterations, second order upwind scheme is evoked with
for the Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) equations relaxation factor 0.50 for velocity and for pressure it is kept
which is used to model the turbulent flow. Air is the fluid 0.30. This procedure is adopted to accelerate convergence
chosen to simulate the track conditions. The density of air is and ensure high accuracy. This procedure is carried out for all
1.18 kg/m3. The initial velocity is set as 250 kmph (i.e., 69.4 simulations till the convergence criteria which is set as 10 -4 is
m/s) and assigned to be uniform. Initial pressure is set to 0 met.
Pascal as the reference pressure is kept as 101325 Pascal.
The static temperature is 27oC. The details of boundary
conditions enforced in this study are listed in Table 2. The
boundary conditions are assigned at outlet, inlet, symmetry
and wall regions so as to simulate real time condition to closer
as possible. The surface of Formula SAE car is imposed with
wall and no-slip condition and rest is assumed as fluid walls
with slip condition under free stream velocity. The simulation is
initially carried out under first order upwind scheme with

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Fig 7. Pressure contours of Car ‘A’ Fig 10. Stagnation pressure contours for Car ‘B’

Fig 8. Pressure contours of Car ‘B’ Fig 11. Velocity contours of Car ‘B’

TABLE 2
BOUNDARY CONDITION
Type of flow 3D steady state flow
Turbulence model k-ω
Turbulence intensity 1%
Wall treatment Automatic wall treatment
Wall No-slip i.e., on surface of car
Fluid Air
Dynamic viscosity 1.84e-5 Pa s
Density 1.18 kg/m3
Specific heat 1003.62 J/kgK
Thermal conductivity 0.026 W/mK
Turbulence Prandtl number 0.90
Minimum wall distance 1e-5m
Minimum temperature 0oC
Maximum temperature 100oC
Reference pressure 101325 Pa
Fig 9. Stagnation pressure contours for Car ‘A’ Convergence criteria `1e-4

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The simulations are carried out under steady state condition at
a velocity 250 kmph (i.e., 69.4 m/s) for both Car „A‟ and Car
„B‟. Car „A‟ denotes Formula SAE car with non-split i.e., single
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rear wing. Car „B‟ denotes Formula SAE car with split rear
wings. Identical conditions are maintained for both these
cases and the results obtained are interpreted below .As can
be seen in Figs. 7 and 8, a high pressure region is generated
on top of the wings which cause the negative lift or downforce.
The maximum value of downforce exerted on the wing for Car
„A‟ is observed to be 2890 N/m2. Similarly, for Car „B‟ with Split
rear wings, the maximum value of downforce on the wing is
5277.9 N/m2. Therefore, on comparing the pressure exerted
on the wings in Car „A‟ and Car „B‟, as can be seen in Figs. 7
and 8 respectively, the downforce generated by the split rear
wing as seen in Fig. 8 is more than the normal single rear
wing. Figures 9 and 10 show the distributions of stagnation
pressure for Car „A‟ and Car „B‟ respectively. The total
pressure beneath the wings is low as compared to the upper
surface of the wings. Due to high pressure above the wings,
the downforce is generated. On comparing Figs. 9 and 10, it is
understood that maximum total pressure is exerted on the
wings and the lowest static pressure is observed below the
wings as well as at the intake main fold in both the models.
The flow on and below the wings is observed to be more Fig 13. Velocity Vector for Car ‘B’
turbulent resulting in causing more drag in Car „A‟ model. But,
in the Car „B‟, the flow is visualized to be comparatively less TABLE 3
turbulent resulting in relatively low drag (refer Table 3 which is COMPARISON OF CAR „A” AND CAR “B”
discussed later). With the rear split wing, the static pressure Car „A‟ With Car „B‟ With
generated is more and negative pressure also dropped from no split in split in the
rear wing rear wing
2970 N/m2 to 8660 N/m2 beneath the wing and pressure on
the wing from 2996 N/m2 to 6400 N/m2 resulting in generating Coefficient of drag (CD) 0.59 0.52
a high downforce. Figure 11 shows the velocity magnitude Drag force (D) 1095 N 965 N
regions of Car „B‟. High velocity region are observed beneath Coefficient of Lift (CL) -1.729 -2.381
the wings, which mean high velocity causes a low pressure Lift force (L) -3157 N -4347 N
L/D ratio -2.882 -4.504
region resulting in generating more downforce.
Figures 12 and 13 show the velocity vectors around the Car
„A‟ and Car „B‟ respectively. It shows the direction of velocity
after or before coming in contact with surface. View 1 and 2
highlights the velocity vectors around the intake and helmet
regions. View 3 depicts the velocity vector at the rear wing. As
can be observed in View 1 and View 3, vortex is formed
beneath the wings when compared to the upper surface. It
also shows the turbulence created and separated region in the
downstream direction. On comparing the velocity vectors of
the Car „A‟ and Car „B‟ as shown in Fig. 12 and Fig. 13, it can
be interpreted that the flow over Car „B‟ with a split in the rear
wing to be less turbulent. Table 2 lists the comparison of
coefficient of lift and coefficient of drag for the two car models
namely Car „A‟ and Car „B‟ respectively. The split rear wings
reduced the drag by 12% and increased the downforce or
negative lift by 38%. The negative value of the lift indicates
that the force is acting downwards. These improved
Fig 12. Velocity Vector Car ‘A’ aerodynamic parameters would benefit the Formula SAE car
to increase its cornering speed and improve the overall fuel
efficiency.

4 CONCLUSION
An attempt is made to enhance the aerodynamic performance
of the Formula SAE car with split rear wings. The comparative
CFD study is done with the existing non-split rear wing (Car
„A‟) and the salient outcome of this present study is listed
below:
 Downforce generated by the split rear wing (i.e., Car „B‟) is
more compared to normal non split wing.
 Static pressure generated in split rear wing is more and
negative pressure dropped from 3720 N/m2 to 8400 N/m2
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below the wing. This helps in generating a high downforce
for Car „B‟ model.
 Area of contact significantly increased in Car „B‟ as
compared to Car „A‟. The turbulence behind the Car „B‟ is
also noticeably decreased.
Based on the outcome of the results, it can be concluded that
split rear wing reduced the drag force and improved negative
lift or downforce. This reduction in drag will help in increasing
the straight line speed and fuel efficiency of Formula SAE car.
Moreover, negative lift helps the vehicle to increase its
cornering speed.
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