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Design optimization of front and rear aerodynamic wings of a high

performance race car with modified airfoil structure

Conference Paper · January 2015

DOI: 10.1109/ICNTE.2015.7029904

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 2015 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2015)

Design Optimization of Front and Rear Aerodynamic

wings of a high performance race car with modified
airfoil structure

Vivek Muralidharan Abhijith Balakrishnan

Final Year, Bachelor of Technology Final Year, Bachelor of Technology
Department of Mechanical Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering
National Institute of Technology Karnataka National Institute of Technology Karnataka
Mangalore, Karnataka, India Mangalore, Karnataka, India
vivek.nair.152@gmail.com abhi.bala93@gmail.com

Suresh Kumar Y.
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
National Institute of Technology Karnataka
Mangalore, Karnataka, India
suresh.yesky@gmail.com

Abstract— Formula Student Racing competitions are
international events organized by Society of Automotive
Engineers globally at various Formula SAE Circuits. Teams
comprising of college students worldwide thrive to build a
Formula style race car to compete at these events. In this high
octane racing event every team tries to have an inch over their
opponents by reducing lap timings. The best way for minimal lap
timings is better performance along the straights and a good
cornering. It becomes difficult for cars to get good traction when
traveling at high speeds as well as they need to reduce their
speeds drastically to take sharp corners. To maximize the
performance of team NITK Racing car for such events an
aerodynamic wings package at the front and the rear is proposed
which produces sufficient downforce when accelerating in the
straights as well as allowing sharp corners at relatively higher
speeds. Being a student based competition intense amount of care
is given to the safety precautions. Cars having sharp corners and
protrusions are liable to be disqualified and hence the wing tip
needs to be modified in order to satisfy the safety rules of the
competition.
governing body. In a racing competition where each moment
matters to the lap timings, getting the best on track
performance of the car, despite plenty of safety regulations is
very crucial. The engine performance is limited by the use of
engines lesser than 610cc and the use of a 20 mm air intake
restrictor as per [1] it becomes constrained to traverse a straight
road by increasing velocity to the maximum of the car.
Moreover the car has to accelerate from very low velocities
which occurs while taking sharp corners thereby losing a lot of
time. An aerodynamic wings package at the front and rear end
produces sufficient downforce corresponding to increase in
velocities helping the car achieve good traction on the ground,
which in turn helps the engine deliver more torque to accelerate
as well as maneuver efficiently at increasing velocities.
Besides, at cornering, aerodynamic downforce keeps the
balance of the vehicle by overcoming sufficient part of the
cornering forces and enabling the car to steer the corner at
relatively higher velocities.

Index Terms—Aerodynamic wings, airfoil, downforce, drag II. ENGINE PERFORMANCE

formula student racing, FSAE, NITK Racing
I. INTRODUCTION
Formula student racing is an international student racing
competition organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers
International at various race circuits all across the globe at
different occasions. The main purpose of this event is to
showcase designing, manufacturing skills of undergraduate and
post graduate students. Being a student based event safety
regulations is the prime concern. The engine performance of
the car is limited by the rules and regulations specified by the
The research conducted by Wordley and Saunders in [2]
enables to determine the maximum engine performance that
can be attained taking into consideration the power loss due to
aerodynamic drag produced during its run. The research relates
the engine power required to design the aerodynamic wings as
the difference between the maximum theoretical engine power
consumed by the car without aerodynamic package to that of
the power required to accelerate the car to the maximum
required speed for the competition.

978-1-4799-7263-0/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

 2015 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2015)
The team NITK Racing uses a Honda CBR 600 engine
which produces a power of 60 BHP as measured by the dyno
test facility available. Design allowance of 75% power is kept
for making the design versatile which can be used on any car
by the team even in future, therefore any car built by the team
with engine power more than 45HP can perform with the
designed aerodynamic wing package.
. (1)
Coefficient of drag is approximately 0.65 for formula style
vehicle as found by Pehan and Kegl in [3]. Density of air (ρ) is
1.225 kg/m3 which is assumed to stay constant over the
working range of velocities as the change in Mach number is
very minimal. The NITK Racing vehicle has a frontal area of
0.87 m2. Computing for the design power of 45 HP or 33.6 KW
yields a maximum theoretical velocity of the car as 165 km per
hour.
All tracks are tailor-made for the competition perspective
that there are hardly any occasions when a car passes more
than 110 km per hour hence the total achievable velocity is
targeted to the same and the power consumed for achieving
this speed is also calculated from eq.(1) as 9.88 KW. The
remaining power produced by the engine can be utilized to
overcome the drag produced by the designed aerodynamic foil.
The design of the front and rear airfoil is based on this limiting
condition of available power worth 23.72 KW. The
observations also depict that the vehicles cruise on an average
of 50 km per hour through most duration of the race, hence it is
better to design the wings based on this so that performance
characteristics is applicable over larger section of the event.
Also at 50 km per hour the power consumed is lesser than 9.88
KW hence more power is available to overcome the
aerodynamic drag. 23.72 KW can be considered as the limiting
drag since at no velocities below 110 km per hour the power
required to overcome drag is going to decrease below this.
III. REAR WING DESIGN
Research by Worley and Saunders in [2] suggest that the
Rear wing is designed for the downforce or any other
performance characteristics while the purpose of the front wing
is to balance the couple produced at the rear end.
Since the available power of 23.73 KW is assumed to be
consumed completely by the aerodynamic wings. Applying
eq.(1) at maximum operational velocity of 110 km per hour
gives a value of CD.Ar of 1.36, where CD is the coefficient of
drag produced and Ar is the planar area of impact. Due to area
limitations at the rear of the car as per the SAE International
rule book[1] the rear wing was designed to 1.2 m wing span and
0.24 m chord length and two wings of the same dimensions are
used. Both the rear wings are kept symmetric and equal in
dimension so as to make it economic while manufacture. Cost
optimization being one of the important criteria of judgment in
the competition reduction in cost of manufacturing is equally
important as the vehicle performance. The limiting coefficient
of drag found to be 2.36. The aerodynamic structure of the car
inclusive of the body should not have a coefficient of drag
more than this else the car would not be able to accelerate to
the maximum desired velocity of 110 km per hour.
A. Airfoil selection
Due to limited space availability at the rear end choosing
the airfoil with the best performance characteristics for low
velocity is very important. As in [4] the front wing design
suggest that deep cambered wing gives the best performance
for formula student racing conditions. Besides, deep cambered
airfoil produces high downforce and has minimum structural
weight which becomes a vital factor.
A number of airfoils commonly used for motorsport
applications with similar characteristics as required for the
SAE Design Competition were researched to determine which
of them would be most suitable for this purpose.
The Selig 1223 airfoil was therefore, chosen for both the
wings. In comparison to other airfoils, it provides much higher
lift in the Reynolds number range of 200,000 - 300,000, which
represents the flow conditions encountered during the
autocross event at competition.
B. Wing Shape
. Typical wing shape includes rectangular, elliptical,
tapered and swept wing profiles.
Due to the restriction in geometry due to the design
regulations given as per the SAE International rule book 2014,
it is not possible to incorporate swept wing although it provides
lift even at the wing tips with minimal drag.
Tapered wings are more efficient than rectangular wings in
terms of lift and drag characteristics but it is difficult to
manufacture and calculate values due to varying cross section.
Elliptical wings have the best efficiency for Lift and Drag
as the induced vortex created at the tip is zero due to the
proportionate decrease in cross section are across the span of
the blade. But it becomes difficult to manufacture elliptical
wing with accuracy.
Rectangular wings are chosen based on the manufacturing
easiness and economic factors despite the inferior lift and drag
characteristics compared to the other three wing profiles. It has
been found that rectangular wings with higher aspect ratio have
properties approaching elliptical wings as explained in [6],
thereby, it is desirable to design a wing with higher aspect ratio
in order to decrease the induced drag created at the wing tip.
C. Shape Optimisation
The selection of the chord length and the wing span were
assumed in the beginning so as to comply with the governing
rules of the competition and to find the limiting coefficient of
drag which the car can produce at the maximum. The airfoil
performance decreases due to vortex formation at the wing tips
therefore end plates are used. End plate characteristics are
determined as in [4].
Actual Aspect Ratio (ARact)
 2015 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2015)

. (2) Calculations results indicate values of ARact as 5, AReff as

18, a as 0.098, CL as 1.865, CDi as 0.059 and CD as 0.075. The
Effective Aspect Ratio (AReff) calculation is performed at the 50 km per hour. Downforce
measured as 124N and drag force as 5.1N.

1 (3) IV. FRONT WING DESIGN

The main purpose of the front wings are to balance the
Line curve slope (a) [5] moment created by the rear wings than to actually cause
substantial downforce. The forces acting at the rear wings are
balanced at the center of gravity of the car thereby design of
. (4) the front wings are finalized which balances the couple created.
For an economical design Selig 1223 wing is selected for the
front as well.
For assumed wing dimension of wing span 0.4 m and 0.32
Coefficient of Lift (CL)
m, after balancing couple, from eq(8) CL found to be 1.89.
Besides value of CDi as 0.909 and CD as 0.9256 was obtained
. (5)
which is less than the limiting value.
The net downforce is the sum of forces generated at the
Induced coefficient of drag (CDi)
front as well as the rear which actually contribute towards the
performance of the car. The drag also increases relatively but
. (6) still within the permissible limit to harm the power availability.

Coefficient of drag (CDi) TABLE I. FORCE CALCULATION AT DIFFERENT VELOCITIES

Velocity (in km Net Downforce Net Drag force
. (7) per hour) (in N) (in N)
40 152.53 23.55
Downforce (F)
50 238.33 36.80
60 343.20 53.00
. (8)
70 467.13 72.13
Drag force (D) 80 610.13 94.22
90 772.19 119.24
. (9) 100 953.32 147.21
110 1153.52 178.13
Where, b is the wing span, c is the chord length, A is the
planar area of impact, h is the height of the end plates and cv is
the chord of the end plates which are 0.5 m and 0.6 m V. ALTERATION OF AIRFOIL STRUCTURE
respectively for the chosen design. α0 is the angle of attack at Pertaining to the safety rules as in [1] of Formula
which CL is zero and α is the angle of attack at which CL is competition, all edges including wings that could contact a
maximum. For Selig 1223 wings the value of α is 13o. CDi is pedestrian should have a minimum radius of 1.5 mm.
0.016 for the selected airfoil. Therefore the selected Selig 1223 wing is modified by
shredding the wing tip to the appropriate dimensions.

Fig.2. Tail end (rear) upto the desired dimension

Fig.1. [7] Coefficient of lift vs angle of attack for Selig 1223 at Reynold’s As in the Fig.2. for the wing profile in yellow color is valid
number 2,00,000
while the red colored tail tip has to be shredded.
 2015 International Conferennce on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2015)

Fig.3. Tail surface with chamfer of 1.5 mm

m Radius
Fig.6. Moddelled Rear wing
The tail tip is considered to be thee most important
contributor towards generation of lift, thereffore shredding off
the tail tip will reduce the coefficient of lift drrastically.

VI. MODELLING OF THE WIN

NGS
After multiple iterations to get the propper orientation and
position of the wing, the 3D model of the wings
w are designed
over commercial packages like Creo. The same model is
validated for flow analysis using ANS SYS Fluent and
Workbench.
Fig.7. Compleete profile of the car

ONAL 2D ANALYSIS
VII. COMPUTATIO
Initial 2D analysis on the performance
p of the wing at the
particular orientation is perforrmed without shredding off the
tail end to understand the flow characteristics for that
orientation for both the rear winng as well as the front wing.

Fig.4. Final dimensions after successivee iterations

Fig.8. Velocity contours for 2D

D flow at 50 km per hour (rear wing)

Fig.5. Modelled Front wing

Fig.9. Velocity contours for 2D

D flow at 50 km per hour (front wing)
 2015 International Conference on Nascent Technologies in the Engineering Field (ICNTE-2015)
Coefficient of drag CD of 0.0515 and Coefficient of lift CL
of -1.405 were obtained for the rear which is comparable to the
ideal values of Selig 1223 airfoil. For the front, the values of
Coefficient of drag CD and Coefficient of lift CL are 0.0510 and
-1.22 respectively.
VIII. COMPUTATIONAL 3D ANALYSIS
Three dimensional wing structure with modified tip end
was performed to find the decrease in the coefficient of lift of
the airfoil which is very significant for the performance of the
car.
Fig.10. Velocity contours for 3D flow at 50 km per hour (Front wing)
Fig.11. Velocity streamlines at the rear wings.
Due to shredded ends there is a significant decrease in the
lift coefficient in both the front as well as the rear. For the
front, the values of Coefficient of drag CD and Coefficient of
lift CL are 0.07 and -0.36 respectively while for the rear wings
Coefficient of lift CL is reduced to 0.407 and has a Coefficient
of drag CD of 0.087.
IX. SCOPE FOR FUTURE
Further analysis on structural characteristics of the wings
can be performed which gives a better idea on the
manufacturing requirements. The team NITK racing wishes to
manufacture these aerodynamic structures using Carbon fibre
since it is has a very high strength to weight ratio. Structural
analysis can be done to test material properties and methods to
optimise the minimum required amount of Carbon fibre for the
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same purpose in order to make an economical investment and
hold an upper edge at the cost perspective at all Formula
Student events. Further plans to make an air brake system by
changing the angle of attack to produce maximum drag when
braking is one of the emerging plans of the team. Moreover,
once successful installation of the airfoil over the team NITK
Racing’s car, the team wishes to perform a wind tunnel test to
validate the model.
X. INFERENCE
Shredded wing tip reduces the wing performance
significantly. Both the rear wing and front wing produces lesser
downforce than in the ideal condition at the angle of attack
corresponding to the maximum coefficient of lift. Nevertheless
the downforce produced although relatively low but still it will
definitely contribute to the vehicle maneuverability.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank Dr. Kumar GN for his huge support for
the team as a faculty advisor. Department of Mechanical
Engineering of NITK Surathkal, India provided great support
for conducting all research and experiments related to this field
of work. Gratitude to all team members of NITK Racing for
their help while conducting performance studies on the car.
The authors are grateful to Vinit K Vardhan and Nikita Meena
for their valuable contribution in this project. First author
thanks Anjaly N Vijayan for her immense support while
writing this paper.
REFERENCES
[1] 2014 Formula SAE Rules, SAE International.
[2] Scott Wordley and, Jeff Saunders,” Aerodynamics for Formula
SAE: Initial design and performance prediction,” SAE
Technical Paper series, Paper no. 2006-01-0806, SAE
International, 2005.
[3] S. Pehan and B. Kegl, “Aerodynamics of a formula S Race Car,”
international design conference - design 2002, Dubrovnik, May
14 - 17, 2002.
[4] Nishanth Balakrishnan, Mohamed Alnouri, Mohammad
Heiranian and Waldemar Koos,” Design of a front aerodynamic
package”, University of Manitoba, unpublished, 2011.
[5] Michael Soso and Michael S Selig, “An Angle of Attack
Correction Scheme for the Design of Low Aspect Ratio Wings
with Endplates,” 02MSEC-15, Society of Automotive Engineers
Inc, 2002.
[6] Flightlab Ground School, “Three-Dimensional Aerodynamics”,
Flight Emergency & Advanced Maneuvers Training, Inc. dba
Flightlab, 2009.
[7] http://airfoiltools.com/airfoil/details?airfoil=s1223-il