2002-01-3294 The Effects of Wing Aerodynamics on Race Copyright © 2002 SAE International ABSTRACT ‘An analytical study is presented to determine the effects (of wing aerodynamics on various racecar performance characteristics and on lap times for different types of ‘racks. The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Formula SAE car is used as the racing vehicle for this study. The study integrates design and analysis methods for airfoils and wings with performance- simulation methods for the racecar. Various performance parameters are considered to study in detail the effects on different portions of the track. A single wing is first used to examine the effects of aerodynamic downforce on car performance without considerations of the fore-and-aft location of the aerodynamic center of pressure. Subsequently a traditional dual-wing setup with a front and a rear wing is used to study the effect of downforce while satisfying a constraint on the location of the aerodynamic center of pressure, Three airfoils with systematic changes to the camber are used as candidates for the section shapes. Resuils are first presented for the racecar performance with the three airfoils during cornering, straightline braking, and straightline acceleration conditions. The effect on lap times for different track geometries is then presented for the single-wing configuration followed by the dual-wing configuration. The results for the single- wing case show that for a majority of the cases examined, the best performance ocours at the maximurntft condition of the wing, indicating that the design goal is one of maximizing wing downforce. For a few track geometries, however, the results indicate that the optimum performance occurs when the wing is ‘operating at less than the maximum-downforce condition. The loss in performance due to increase in drag associated with increasing the downforce beyond this optimum value outweighs the benefits of the ‘additional downforce. The results for the dual-wing setup show that the range of possible operating points for the rear wing is considerably reduced by the constraint that the front-wing downforce has to balance the rear-wing downforce. The approach is suitable for the determination of the most-suitable wing for a given track. While the results in the paper focus on the NCSU Vehicle Performance Noah J. Mckay* and Ashok Gopalarathnam' Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University Formula SAE car, the methods, results and discussion are applicable to 2 variety of racing vehicles with wings. INTRODUCTION ‘The importance of aerodynamic down force for improved performance of racing vehicles is well known [1,2]. Mean lap times at all tracks continue to decrease as engineers become more familiar with the aerodynamic effects on car performance and lear how to use this knowledge to their advantage via computational studies [3.4] and wind- tunnel experiments [4]. ‘There are usually several constraints on the generation ‘of aerodynamic downforce on racecars. Some of the constraints are imposed by the race rules such as those that dictate the maximum size of the wings, the sizes of "box" constraints on the geometry of the airfoil shape, as well as the minimum height of the front wing from the ground. In addition, there are some practical constraints ‘as well. In order to maintain desirable handling qualities, there Is a definite constraint on the fore-and-aft location of the aerodynamic center of pressure (CP) for the car. Typically the CP needs to be located within a certain distance forward or behind the car center of gravity (CG) [1]. For a car with front and rear wings, the constraint on the location of the CP defines the front-to-rear ‘aerodynamic balance for the downforce, As a result, the incidence of each of the wings needs to be adjusted to ensure the correct balance. Another consideration associated with increased downforce is the accompanying increase in aerodynamic drag. It is sometimes not clear as to whether the performance decrease due to the increased drag can outweigh the benefits of the downforce, This paper presents an approach to the analysis of the effects of wing downforce on racecar performance. The effects of the CP-location constraint for a dual wing configuration and the additional drag associated with the downforce are both taken into consideration. The effect of the downforce on the total lap-time performance is studied by examining the effect on three portions of the track: steady-state comering, straight-line braking, and straight-line acceleration.In this paper, the approach has been applied to perform a systematic study of the effects of wings on the performance of the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Formula SAE car. The NCSU team has competed twice in the Formula SAE competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The team has enjoyed much success in its efforts finishing 18" among over 100 teams and capturing the Rookie of the Year award for the most outstanding new team for the 1999-2000 season. The rules for the Formula SAE competition do not prescribe specific geometry constraints for the wings, if wings are used for a car. AS a result of the relatively few design constraints, there has been a wide variation in the design concepts for all areas of the cars [5] since the first Formula SAE compeiition over two decades ago. For this competition, many teams have opted not to use wings. Among those that do use wings, there is a broad range in shape and size of the wings, indicating that no clear optimum solution has been found for this design problem. Based Con this observation, itis not even clear if use of wings would have a clear benefit for cars in this competition. The analytical approach developed in this paper is ideally suited to providing guidance in the design of wings for the NCSU Formula SAE car, and for this reason, this race vehicle is chosen as the example for illustrating the results from the approach. The overall approach, however, has a broader scope and is useful for other race vehicles with wings. BASELINE GEOMETRY This section presents the baseline geometry for the wings used in this study. For the single-wing configuration, the primary objective is to study the effect of the downforce without regard to the considerations of the fore-aft balance of the car. The considerations of the fore-aft balance constraint are considered only for the dual-wing configuration. Figures 1 and 2 show the single-wing and dual-wing concepts, respectively. In all cases, the span (b) of the wings Is 1.37 m. The front and the rear wings in the dual-wing setup both have the same chord of 0.38 m. The chord in the single-wing case is 0.76 m, resulting in equal total planform areas for both the single- and dual-wing setups. Reference area, Swi = 0.52m* Sinale-wing case Single wing dimensions: Span, b=1.37m Chord, ¢= 0.76 m Area, 04 m* Table 4: Wing dimensions for Dual-wing case the single-wing Front and rear wing dimensions: | and dual-wing Span, b= 1.37 m configurations. Chord, ¢= 0.38 m Area. 52 me Figure 1: Schematic representation of the ing configuration. Figure 2: Schematic representation of the dual-wing configuration. METHODS OF APPROACH In this section, the methods used for airfoil design, out- of-ground and in-ground-effect airfoil analysis, finite-wing analysis, fore-and-aft balance analysis and the effect of these aerodynamic characteristics on the NCSU SAE racecar performance are described. The contribution to the time taken for one lap on a given track geometry has. been obtained by integrating the effects of the aerodynamics on comering, straight-line acceleration and braking performance parameters.AIRFOIL DESIGN FOR RACE CAR WINGS ‘The design of airfoils for a particular application has to take into consideration the specific design requirements such as operating Reynolds and Mach numbers and design constraints such as geometry restrictions. For the Formula SAE car wing design, the low operating speeds and the allowable chord lengths for the wing result in a chord Reynolds number of around 600,000. The flow over the wings can be considered incompressible. Unlike the wings designed for racecars in the CART and. Formula 1 series, there are no geometry constraints such as “rule boxes" imposed by the rules for the Formula SAE competition. ‘The current effort draws on recent progress in the application of inverse airfoil design to high-ift racecar ‘wings [3] and the design of low Reynolds number airfoils for other applications [6]. In such an inverse design process, the emphasis is on prescribing the desired Serodynamic characteristics on the airfoil and the shape of the resulting airfoil is an outcome of the design process. Such inverse design methods have proved to be successful [6] in reducing the adverse effects of laminar separation bubbles that may otherwise adversely dominate the aerodynamic behavior of airfoils operating at the low Reynolds numbers relevant for the current application. For the current study, three airfoils with systematic changes to the lift range and camber have been Gesigned using the PROFOIL [7] and MFOIL inverse sirfoll design codes. The geometries for the three airfoils ‘A.B, and C are shown in Fig. 3. As seen, airfoil A has the least camber and airfoil C has the largest camber. REAR-WING AIRFOIL ANALYSIS ‘The airfoil characteristics for the single-wing case and for the rear wing in the dual-wing configuration were ‘obtained assuming that the wing operates out of ground effect. Furthermore, it is assumed that the car body does not significantly influence the airfoll characteristics. The XFOIL code [8] for single-element airfoil analysis has been used for these out-of-ground effect analyses. The profile-drag and lift characteristics as predicted for the three airfoils are compared in Fig. 4. As seen from Fig. 4, airfoll C has the highest maximum lift coefficient (Camas) Airfoil G === Airfoil B ——— Airfoil A Figure 3: Geometries for the three airfolls. Figure 4: Lift, drag, and moment characteristics for the three airfoils. FRONT-WING AIRFOIL ANALYSIS ‘The front-wing analysis needs to take the ground effect into consideration. One of the ways to simulate the flow over a wing in ground effect is to model the flow past the ‘wing and its mirror image below the ground, as shown in Fig. 5. The MSES code [10] for multielement airfoil viscous analyses was used for this purpose, and the ‘aerodynamic characteristics of airfoil A was obtained in ground effect over 2 range of angles of attack by analyzing each case in the presence of its mirror image. Figure 6 shows the characteristics of airfoil A at a height ‘of 0.3c above the ground. Because of the proximity to the ground and the resulting adverse pressure gradients, the flow over the suction side of the airfoil separates even at moderate angles of attack. As @ result, the MSES code does not converge beyond an alpha of 3 degrees (see Fig. 6). il A modeled in MSES [10] with image for in-ground-effect analysis. FINITE WING EFFECTS Figure ‘Owing to the fact that the trailing vortices from the wing result, in. an induced flow on the wing, shown ‘Schematically in Fig. 7, it is necessary to correct the airfoil data for finite-wing effects in order to correctly fstimate the lift and drag on the wing. In the current fffort, the effect of the car on the wing flow field is neglected. While this is not true in general, the ‘assumption allows estimation of the wing aerodynamic forces using just the finite-wing computations.Figure 6: Aerodynamic characteristics of airfoil A at ground height of 0.3c. Figure 7: Schematic representation of the induced- flow effects on a finite wing. en Wing lit coefficient, G. AD etd 220. ‘Wing incidence, i, (deo) Figure 8: Wing CL-a. curves for the three airfoi The effect of the induced flow on the operating angle of attack of the airfoil has been discussed for CART-type ‘wings in Ref. 3 for wings operating out of ground effect. Equation 1 shows the finite-wing relationship between the wing incidence i,, wing lift coefficient C. and wing aspect ratio AR. These finite-wing corrections enable the determination of the C.-i, curve for the three dimensional wing for the out-of-ground-effect conditions. ‘These curves are shown in Fig. 8 for the three airfoils. ‘The induced drag for both the single- and dual-wing setups was obtained using a vortex lattice method, in Which the front and rear wings wre modeled in the presence of their mirror images below the ground plane. a FORE-AFT BALANCE ANALYSIS FOR DUAL-WING SETUP ‘The conventional arrangement of wings on a race vehicle includes @ front wing usually ahead of the front wheels and a rear wing located at or behind the rear axle centerline. The front wing in this arrangement is usually placed very near the ground plane in order to take advantage of the greater downforce that results from the ground effect. In the current study, an ‘assumption was made that the desired aerodynamic CP location is 0.076m (3 inches) behind the car CG. The fore-aft balance equations, shown in Eq. 2 and 3, were derived by setting the moments of the aerodynamic loads about the CP to zero, as shown in Fig. 9. CAR PERFORMANCE ‘The methods for analysis of the performance gains and losses are presented for the three main areas most pertinent to the Formula SAE car. These areas are constant-radius cornering, straightine braking and straight-line acceleration. These three conditions are subsequently combined to obtain the lap time for a given track geometry.Constant-Radius Comering ‘The comering performance of the car was obtained by assuming constant speed and constant radius during the maneuver. With these assumptions and a basic free body diagram, a maximum cornering velocity could be found as a function of lift coefficient, The basic opposing forces on a vehicle in pure comering are the centrifugal force, shown in Eq. 4, and the friction force provided by the tires shown in Eq. 5. Figure 10 shows the well- known free body diagram for the constant-radius ‘comering case, assuming the vehicle to be a point mass, mv? 4) F=uN (6) v2 Feentripetal = 2 V's the centripetal T_ acceleration Figure 10: Free Body Diagram for Constant-Radius Cornering. For a vehicle to be achieving maximum cornering these two forces must balance. The friction force can be rewritten, as shown in Eq. 6, to account for the increased normal force provided by the wings. (6) F= shore) pr?scy) Equating the centrifugal and friction forces and solving for velocity for the comering, shown in Eq. 7 ve a 7m PSC a Vu 2 Straight-Line Braking Braking performance relates to the deceleration of a like comering velocity, is a function of tie friction. The two opposing forces during a braking event 79 are the inertia force due to deceleration, shown in Eq. 8, and the other due to tire grip, shown in Eq. 9. F=ma (8) F=alw+ ¥,orsc,) ® ‘These equations must balance. Braking distance between two speeds, shown in Eq. 10, is used as a measure of braking performance. (10) traight-Line Acceleration ‘Acceleration of a Formula SAE race car is typically determined by engine power rather than tire grip as there is excess fiction force available throughout the majority of acceleration. Therefore a power balance is needed to find the available acceleration. with the addition of a wing. Acceleration time between two speeds is determined in this analysis. The power needed to accelerate a vehicle is shown in Eq. 11 P=FV cy The opposing forces to acceleration are, the inertia force ‘ma and the drag forces Dis, and Dying. The power for a vehicle with and without @ wing is held constant and therefore the power balance between the two vehicles is shown in Eq. 12. The time required for acceleration from V; to Vy is evaluated in the integral shown in Eq. 13. In these equations, a; is the acceleration of the car without wings. V (may + Dear) =V (may + Dear + Ping ) (12) aw (13) 1g PVSCy ww m Performance Fora Lap Using the methods for calculation of the ear performance for the constant-radius comering, the straight-line braking, and the straight-line acceleration, a simple lap- time simulation model was created. Figure 11 shows the ‘assumed geometry of the simple track, with two straight- line segments and two semi-circular segments. The primary objective of the lap-time simulation was to determine the changes in the lap performance due to changes in the aerodynamics.A constant comering speed Vim was assumed for the ‘cornering condition. This cornering speed was assumed to be the maximum-possible speed from Eq. 7 with the down force available from the airfoiliwing configuration under consideration < Longin, F—> Figure 11: Assumed track geometry for lap-time ‘simulation. {At the start of the straight segment, the car is assumed to accelerate from a velocity of Vij, to a maximum speed of Vinx, and then decelerate from Vinax Back to Van at the start of the next comer. For these acceleration and deceleration conditions Eqs. 10 and 13 ‘were used, It must be noted that Vix is not known @ priori and needs to be solved to satisfy the requirement that the length of the straight-line segment is equal to that assumed for the track geometry under consideration, This solution was done using the zero- finding function fzero in Matlab by assuming Vx to be & variable. Using this approach, the time for a single lap can be ‘computed by integrating the times for the comers and the straight-line segments. Thus, the approach allows the computation of the lap times for different airfoil'wing configurations. RESULTS For the results presented in this section, the assumed values for the various parameters are shown in Table 2 The results are first presented for the racecar performance with the three airfoils during comering, straightline braking, and straightline accelerati conditions, The effect on lap times for different track geometries is then presented for the single-wing configuration followed by the dual-wing configuration. CAR PERFORMANCE FOR THE SINGLE-WING CASE Constant-Radius Comering ‘The maximum comering velocity from Eq, 7 is presented in Figure 12 and shown as a function of wing incidence for the three airfoils A, B, and C. Because the comering performance is limited by the available traction and not by the available engine power, the comering performance is not affected by the increase in drag, This figure shows that it is possible to achieve a higher velocity with greater wing incidence. In other words, the downforce allows a higher velocity to be achieved in a corner of a given radius or a smaller comer radius to be achieved for a given comering velocity. It is seen that, as can be expected, airfoils with higher Cin (airfoil Cin this example) are better than those with lower Cinas ‘Atmospheric density, = 1.2256 kgim? Mass, m 72.3 kg Coeff. of friction, it Front wing location, x; = 0.86 m Rear wing location, x. = 0.86 m ‘Acceleration with no wing, a; = 7.66 mis Table 2: Assumed values for parameters used in the performance simulation. 6 Airfoil © — Airfoil 8 Airfoil A, Comner speed (m/s) Cy 0a ad ‘Wing incidence, i, (29) Figure 12: Variation of corner speed with wing incidence for the three airfoils. Straight-Line Braking ‘The solution for the straight-line braking distance, shown in Eq. 10 is shown in Fig, 13 for deceleration from 20 to 10 mis, This figure also shows that airfoils with higher Cinax Fe preferred Straight-Line Acceleration Assuming a constant value of 7.66 mis* for the acceleration of the car without the wing, the time required for acceleration can be found, This acceleration time for 10 to 20 mis is shown in figure 14. ‘Acceleration time increases with increasing wing incidence as a result of the additional drag force of the ‘wing. This plot demonstrates the compromise involved in the use of wing downforce. Braking and comering performance improve with increasing C, when compared to a vehicle with no wing, On the other hand, acceleration performance, where traction is not the limiting factor, will decrease due to the additional wing drag.4 = Airfoil & ital 6 San ‘ito A £ B13 B 125 12 S| sete ra ea ala oA ‘Wing incidence, i, (ded) Figure 13: Variation of braking distance with wing Incidence for the three airfoils. Airfoil © Airfoil B 4.38 ® 1.32 13 OS pa ‘Wing incidence, i, (deg) Time (6) to accelerate from 10 m/s to 20 m/s 8 Figure 14: Acceleration time as a function of wing incidence for the three airfoils. Le ime simulation (si ing case} The lap-time simulation approach described earlier has been used to study the effect of varying the wing incidence with the airfoil C for different track geometries. The different track geometries all have the same radius for the comers (35m), but different lengths for the straight segments. Figures 16-18 show the results for straightlino lengths of 0, 175, 280, and 315m respectively. In all of these figures, the total track time for one lap has been plotted as a function of the car C,, defined as the car downforce nondimensionalized by the reference area, Sw 81 For the track with zero-length straight in Fig. 15, itis seen that higher lift coefficients result in a decrease in the lap times. This result agrees well withthe increase in corner speed with C, as seen from Fig. 12. Because the comering performance is limited solely by the available traction and not by the available engine power, the performance of the car in a circular track is not affected by the drag of the wings. The best lap-time performance for this track Is achieved at the maximum possible C, which corresponds to the Cines = 5 i enh =O Figure 15: Single-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 0-m straight length. Figure 16: Single-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 175-m straight length. ‘As the length of the straightine segment increases, there is a tradeoff between benefits to the cornering and braking performance with increasing Ci and the loss in acceleration due to the increased drag associated with higher C,. To compare the benefits to the car performance due to the downforce and the loss in the performance due to the added drag, Figs. 16—18 present not only the total track time as a function of car a, but also the following additional information: (a) the track time for the car without a wing, indicated by amarker corresponding to zero Ci, (b) the track time as a function of C, if the induced drag was assumed zero, and (c) the track-time curve assuming that both the induced and profile drag were zero. dus 5, it nh = poststall es Teta tack te) oy ‘al Figure 17: Single-wing lap time on a track with 38-m radius and 280-m straight length. Hecate oon Figure 18: Single-wing lap time on a track with 35m radius and 315-m straight length. It can be clearly seen that among the two contributions: to wing drag, the induced drag contribution is by far larger than that due to profile drag. The induced drag increases with increasing C,, Furthermore, on tracks with large straight-segment lengths the car spends @ greater percentage of the lap time during the straight- line acceleration. Because of these reasons, for tracks with large straight segments (Fig. 18), the best car lap- time performance occurs at a C, that is less than the maximum achievable C.. When operating at CL higher than this optimum value, the additional performance improvement with downforce increase is negated by the loss due to the increase in induced drag. CAR PERFORMANCE FOR THE DUAL-WING CASE The performance of the car with the dualwing setup is studied with airfoil C for the rear wing and airfoil A for the front wing in ground effect. Because of the small range of usable angles of attack for the airfoil when operating in ground effect, the available range of car C, for the dual-wing case Is smaller than for the single-wing case. Additionally, the total induced drag is less than that for the corresponding single-wing case because the downforce is split between two wings of the same span. Lap-time simulation (dual-wing case) Figures 19—22 show the lapdime performance predictions for the dualwing case on the four track geometries. As with the single-wing case, the lap time decreases with increasing C, for the circular track. AS the distance of the straight segment increases, the effect, of the induced-drag increase becomes more noticeable. However, this drag increase is less than that seen for the single-wing cases. In general, the dual-wing performance is similar to the corresponding single-wing performance. However, the dual-wing setup corresponds to @ configuration that is trimmed for good handing, whereas the single-wing configuration did not take the fore-and-aft balance of the car into consideration. Figure 19: Dual-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and O-m straight length.3. Gopalarathnam, A. Selig, MS., and Hsu, F., “Design of High-Lift Airfoils for Low Aspect Ratio Wings with Endplates,” AIAA Paper 97-2232, June 1997. 4, Zerihan, J and Zhang, X., “A Single Element Wing in Ground Effect; Comparisons of Experiments and Computation,” AIAA Paper 2001-0423, January 2001 5. Case, D.E., ‘Formula SAE - “Competition History 1981 — 1996,” SAE Paper 962509, 1996. 6. Selig, M. S., Gopalarathnam, A., Giguere, P., and Lyon, C. A. “Systematic Airfoil Design Studies at Low Reynolds Numbers," in Fixed and Flapping Wing Aerodynamics for Micro Air Vehicle Applications, Mueller, T. J., editor, Progress in Aeronautics and Astronautics, vol. 195, AIAA, pp 143-167. 7. Selig, M. S., and Maughmer, M. D., “Generalized Multipoint Inverse Airfoil Design,” AIAA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 11, Nov. 1992, pp. 2618-2625. 8. Drela, M., “XFOIL: An Analysis and Design System for Low Reynolds Number Airfoils,” in Low Reynolds Number Aerodynamics, Mueller, T. J., editor, Lecture Notes in Engineering, Vol. 84, Springer- Verlag, New York, June 1989, pp. 1-12. 9. Katz, J. and Dykstra, L, “Effect of Wing/Body Interaction on the Aerodynamics of Two Generic Racing Cars,” SAE Paper 920349, 1992, 40. Drela, M., "Newton Solution of Coupled Viscous/Inviscid Multiolement Airfoil Flows,” AIAA, Paper 90-1470, June 1990. CONTACT “Graduate Research Assistant, Box 7910, njmckay@eos.nesu.edu, Student Member, SAE. “Assistant Professor, Box 7910, ashok_g@ncsu.edu, (818) 515-5669, 84