Wing twist

Angle of attack

Engineering

Ground effect (cars)

Aerospace engineering

Wing

Gender studies

Aerodynamics

Data mining

Computer science

Drag

Mechanical engineering

Wing loading

Lift-induced drag

Mathematics

Lift-to-drag ratio

Lift (data mining)

Sociology

Race (biology)

Front (military)

Aeronautics

Aerodynamic design is getting continuously more important for formula student race cars. One very important aerodynamic device of these cars is the front wing. The front wings, as well as the rear wings generate a downforce to improve the stability of the vehicle especially when driving on curves. The front wings are mounted so close to the ground that they are already in ground effect. The rear wings are already too far from the ground and therefore are not in ground effect. Therefore it is very important to design the front wings in such a way as to maximise the ground effect. Therefore these wings have to be mounted at a proper distance from the ground in order to have the maximum ground effect. If the front wings are too close to the ground the ground effect disappears or even the downforce is less than far from the ground. Since the rear wings are out of the ground effect they have not been considered in this investigation. In this work a series of wing designs, with different aspect ratios, at different angles of attack and at different distances from the ground where designed and investigated with computational fluid dynamics using the commercial Navier-Stokes solver STAR CCM+. The downforce lift coefficients of these wings in free flight as well as in ground effect and as the corresponding drag coefficients are presented. The best configurations of aspect ratio and angle of attack as well as the optimum distances from the ground to operate these front wings in ground effect are shown and the results discussed in detail.

Ground Effect on Wings for Formula Student Race Cars