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SAE Paper 2002-01-3294

The Effects of Wing Aerodynamics on Race Vehicle Performance


Noah J. Mckay* and Ashok Gopalarathnam
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7910
Copyright 2002 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.

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 tracks. 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 performancesimulation 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. Results are first presented for the racecar performance with the three airfoils during cornering, straight-line braking, and straight-line 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 singlewing case show that for a majority of the cases examined, the best performance occurs at the maximum-lift 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 1 of 10

Formula SAE car, the methods, results and discussion are applicable to a 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 learn how to use this knowledge to their advantage via computational studies [3,4] and windtunnel 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 cornering, 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 18th 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 competition 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 on this observation, it is 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. Figure 1: Schematic representation of the singlewing configuration.

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, Sref = 0.52m2 Single-wing case Single wing dimensions: Span, b = 1.37 m Chord, c = 0.76 m Area, S = 1.04 m2 Dual-wing case Front and rear wing dimensions: Span, b = 1.37 m Chord, c = 0.38 m Area, S = 0.52 m2 Figure 2: Schematic representation of the dual-wing configuration.

METHODS OF APPROACH
In this section, the methods used for airfoil design, outof-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 cornering, straight-line acceleration and braking performance parameters.

Table 1: Wing dimensions for the single-wing and dual-wing configurations.

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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-lift 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 aerodynamic 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 designed using the PROFOIL [7] and MFOIL inverse airfoil 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 airfoil 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, airfoil C has the highest maximum lift coefficient (CLmax).

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 multi-element airfoil viscous analyses was used for this purpose, and the aerodynamic characteristics of airfoil A was obtained in ground effect over a 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 a result, the MSES code does not converge beyond an alpha of 3 degrees (see Fig. 6).

Figure 5: Airfoil A modeled in MSES [10] with image for in-ground-effect analysis. FINITE WING EFFECTS 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 estimate the lift and drag on the wing. In the current effort, 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. 3 of 10

Figure 3: Geometries for the three airfoils.

the wing incidence iw, wing lift coefficient CL and wing aspect ratio AR. These finite-wing corrections enable the determination of the CL-iw curve for the threedimensional 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 were modeled in the presence of their mirror images below the ground plane.

iw = +

CL AR

(1)

FORE-AFT BALANCE ANALYSIS FOR DUAL-WING SETUP Figure 6: Aerodynamic characteristics of airfoil A at ground height of 0.3c. Local velocity Freestream velocity The conventional arrangement of wings on a race vehicle includes a 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.

Figure 7: Schematic representation of the inducedflow effects on a finite wing.

Lr

Lf

Figure 9: Free Body Diagram of Dual Wing System.

X cp =

Lr x r L f x f M f M r L f + Lr

(2)

C Lr xr X cp =

Sf S f cf Sr Sc CL f x f CM r xr r r CM f x f S ref S ref S ref cref S ref cref (3) Sf S + C Lr r CL f S ref S ref

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, straight-line braking and straight-line acceleration. These three conditions are subsequently combined to obtain the lap time for a given track geometry.

Figure 8: Wing CL- curves for the three airfoils. 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 4 of 10

Constant-Radius Cornering The cornering 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 cornering are the centrifugal force, shown in Eq. 4, and the friction force provided by the tires shown in Eq. 5. Figure 10 shows the wellknown free body diagram for the constant-radius cornering case, assuming the vehicle to be a point mass.

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 = W + 1 V 2 SC L . 2

(9)

These equations must balance. Braking distance between two speeds, shown in Eq. 10, is used as a measure of braking performance.
Vf

mV Fc = r

s=
(4) (5)

W + 1 V 2 SC L Vi 2 m
Straight-Line Acceleration

VdV

(10)

F = N

Acceleration of a Formula SAE race car is typically determined by engine power rather than tire grip as there is excess friction 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

(11)

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.

The opposing forces to acceleration are, the inertia force ma and the drag forces Dcar, and Dwing. The power for a vehicle with and without a wing is held constant and therefore the power balance between the two vehicles is shown in Eq. 12. The time required for acceleration from Vi to Vf is evaluated in the integral shown in Eq. 13. In these equations, a1 is the acceleration of the car without wings.

1 F = W + V 2SCL 2

(6)

V (ma1 + Dcar ) = V ma 2 + Dcar + D wing


Vf

(12)

t=

Equating the centrifugal and friction forces and solving for velocity for the cornering, shown in Eq. 7.

1 V 2 SC D _ tot Vi 2 a1 m

dV

(13)

V =

W m 1 SC L r 2

(7)

Performance For a Lap Using the methods for calculation of the car performance for the constant-radius cornering, the straight-line braking, and the straight-line acceleration, a simple laptime simulation model was created. Figure 11 shows the assumed geometry of the simple track, with two straightline 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. 5 of 10

Straight-Line Braking Braking performance relates to the deceleration of a vehicle. This, like cornering velocity, is a function of tire friction. The two opposing forces during a braking event

A constant cornering speed Vturn 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 airfoil/wing configuration under consideration.
Length, F Radius

achieved for a given cornering velocity. It is seen that, as can be expected, airfoils with higher Clmax (airfoil C in this example) are better than those with lower Clmax. Atmospheric density, = 1.2256 kg/m3 Mass, m = 272.3 kg = 1.1 Coeff. of friction, Front wing location, xf = 0.86 m Rear wing location, xr = 0.96 m Acceleration with no wing, a1 = 7.66 m/s2 Table 2: Assumed values for parameters used in the performance simulation.

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 Vturn to a maximum speed of Vmax, and then decelerate from Vmax back to Vturn at the start of the next corner. For these acceleration and deceleration conditions Eqs. 10 and 13 were used. It must be noted that Vmax is not known a 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 zerofinding function fzero in Matlab by assuming Vmax to be a variable. Using this approach, the time for a single lap can be computed by integrating the times for the corners 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 cornering, straight-line braking, and straight-line 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. CAR PERFORMANCE FOR THE SINGLE-WING CASE Constant-Radius Cornering The maximum cornering 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 cornering performance is limited by the available traction and not by the available engine power, the cornering 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 corner radius to be 6 of 10 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 m/s. This figure also shows that airfoils with higher Clmax are preferred. Straight-Line Acceleration Assuming a constant value of 7.66 m/s2 for the acceleration of the car without the wing, the time required for acceleration can be found. This acceleration time for 10 to 20 m/s 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 cornering performance improve with increasing CL 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.

For the track with zero-length straight in Fig. 15, it is seen that higher lift coefficients result in a decrease in the lap times. This result agrees well with the increase in corner speed with CL as seen from Fig. 12. Because the cornering 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 CL which corresponds to the CLmax.

Figure 13: Variation of braking distance with wing incidence for the three airfoils.

Figure 15: Single-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 0-m straight length.

poststall

stall

Figure 14: Acceleration time as a function of wing incidence for the three airfoils. Lap-time simulation (single-wing 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 corners (35m), but different lengths for the straight segments. Figures 15-18 show the results for straight-line 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 CL, defined as the car downforce nondimensionalized by the reference area, Sref. Figure 16: Single-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 175-m straight length. As the length of the straight-line segment increases, there is a tradeoff between benefits to the cornering and braking performance with increasing CL and the loss in acceleration due to the increased drag associated with higher CL. To compare the benefits to the car performance due to the downforce and the loss in the performance due to the added drag, Figs. 1618 present not only the total track time as a function of car CL, but also the following additional information: (a) the track time for the car without a wing, indicated by a 7 of 10

marker corresponding to zero CL, (b) the track time as a function of CL if the induced drag was assumed zero, and (c) the track-time curve assuming that both the induced and profile drag were zero.

CAR PERFORMANCE FOR THE DUAL-WING CASE The performance of the car with the dual-wing 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 CL 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)

poststall

stall

Figure 17: Single-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 280-m straight length.

Figures 1922 show the lap-time performance predictions for the dual-wing case on the four track geometries. As with the single-wing case, the lap time decreases with increasing CL 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 a configuration that is trimmed for good handling, whereas the single-wing configuration did not take the fore-and-aft balance of the car into consideration.

Figure 18: Single-wing lap time on a track with 35-m 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 CL. Furthermore, on tracks with large straight-segment lengths the car spends a greater percentage of the lap time during the straightline acceleration. Because of these reasons, for tracks with large straight segments (Fig. 18), the best car laptime performance occurs at a CL that is less than the maximum achievable CL. 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.

Figure 19: Dual-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 0-m straight length.

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CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents results for understanding in detail the effects of wing aerodynamics on various racecar performance parameters. The study was performed by coupling methods for design and analysis of airfoils and wings with performance-simulation models for the car. Three airfoils with systematic changes to the camber were considered. Three performance parameters were studied in detail to determine their individual contributions to the total lap-time performance. The results are presented both for a single-wing configuration in which fore-and-aft balance of the car is ignored and a dual-wing configuration in which the important fore-and-aft balance is taken into consideration. The results show that higher-lift airfoils are preferred for the cornering and braking conditions. The higher-lift airfoils, however, result in a reduced acceleration performance. This tradeoff in wing design is reflected in the lap-time performance depending on the track geometry. For tracks that have more cornering and less straight-line segments, the best car performance is achieved at the highest possible downforce. For tracks with larger percentage of straight segments, the induced-drag effects are noticeable, and detract from the benefits due to the downforce. The results for the dual-wing setup show that the car can be balanced only in a small range of lift coefficients. The performance is similar to a comparable single-wing configuration. In all cases, the effect of the airfoil profile drag is negligible when compared to the effect of induced drag. This result points out that in the design of airfoils for race car wings, the focus needs to be primarily on achieving high maximum lift even if that objective results in high profile drag. The attempts at reducing drag need to be spent on minimizing the induced drag. While the results are presented for the Formula SAE car used as the example vehicle in this paper, the methods and much of the discussion are valid for a larger range of racing vehicles with wings. The paper also provides an approach that can be used in the selection of the most appropriate airfoils for racecar wings, and can reduce the design cycle time for race vehicles as well as the effort required to tune the wings for different tracks.

Figure 20: Dual-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 175-m straight length.

Figure 21: Dual-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 280-m straight length.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank Mark Drela for the XFOIL and MSES codes used in this work.

REFERENCES
Figure 22: Dual-wing lap time on a track with 35-m radius and 315-m straight length. 1. Milliken W.F. and Milliken D.L, Race Car Vehicle Dynamics. SAE International, Warrendale, PA, 1996. 2. Katz, J., Race Car Aerodynamics. Robert Bently Publishers, Cambridge, MA, 1995. 9 of 10

3. Gopalarathnam, A., Selig, M.S., 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. 54, SpringerVerlag, 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. 10. Drela, M., Newton Solution of Coupled Viscous/Inviscid Multielement Airfoil Flows, AIAA Paper 90-1470, June 1990.

CONTACT
Graduate Research Assistant, Box njmckay@eos.ncsu.edu, Student Member, SAE.
*

7910,

Assistant Professor, Box 7910, ashok_g@ncsu.edu, (919) 515-5669.

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