Interestingly, the downforce, a rear wing produces can be increased without the need of complex redesigning, by attaching a Gurney flap at the trailing edge of the rear wing with a variable angle of attack spoiler. To overcome this, the profile has to be modified, meaning, that the camber, chord, leading and trailing edge profiles has to be redesigned. It can be noted that, although the rear wing produces significant downforce, it is almost constant. Since the principles of aerodynamics conform to automotive applications as well, their governing laws and principles can be applied for racecar aerodynamics as well. The widely used automotive aerodynamic component to generate the required downforce is a rear wing, which is an inverted airfoil. For some classes of racing vehicles, it is important to produce downforce to improve traction and thus enhancing their cornering abilities. KeywordsRace car aerodynamics Gurney flap downforce Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)Īutomotive aerodynamics, deals with the study of interaction between the fluid stream around the automobile and aims to reduce the drag, wind noise, preventing undesired lift and other causes of aerodynamic instability at high speeds. It was observed that the downforce to drag (L/D) ratio increases with an increase in the angle of attack and the Gurney height. The contours of pressure distribution, pressure coefficient and the flow path lines generated were visualized for varying flow characteristics within the computational domain. The numerical analysis was carried out in ANSYS Fluent 14.5. The standard two- equation turbulence kinetic energy and turbulence dissipation model was chosen for the solver. A velocity inlet model for an air speed of 0.1 Mach (33 m/s) was chosen and the analyses were iterated with different angles of attack. The results were plotted for various factors like downforce, drag and the downforce to drag (L/D) ratio for various heights of the Gurney flap. The flow analyses were done considering the rear wing to be placed in a pressure far field without considering the ground effect.
The model was created in AutoCAD 2013, and the mesh was defined in the pre-processing software ANSYS Gambit 2.4.6. Krishna Ganesan 1 Sai Gowtham J 2 1 & 2, Independent Researchers Chennai, IndiaĪbstract This research paper aims to study the effect of attaching a Gurney flap on the trailing edge of an inverted NACA 23012 rear wing. Study of effect of Gurney Flap on an inverted NACA 23012 Rear Wing