Push-button Design Optimization of a Race Car Front Wing

“CAD-Based Design Optimization of a Race Car Front Wing,” a joint webinar from Pointwise and Phoenix Integration about automated meshing enabled push-button design optimization has been released.

Watch the webinar: https://ptwi.se/3516uWJ

If you have ever seen the front wing of a Formula 1 vehicle, you would think you are staring at a piece of modern art and not one of the greatest contributors to the downforce and handling of the vehicle. Current front wing designs are intricate and no two are the same, a testament to the complexity of the flowfield experienced by each vehicle as it makes its way around the track. Simplifying the design and looking at just the twist distribution, there is still little to no agreement found. Hence the purpose of this study. Can we identify the optimal twist distribution for the front wing of a race car that maximizes downforce without increasing drag? It turns out that we can.

By using ModelCenter from Phoenix Integration as an integration platform, Pointwise to generate the meshes, and AcuSolve to run the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations, push-button design optimization was achieved. In fact, the model-centric process was built on parametric geometry so that a single mesh could be mapped effortlessly from one design iteration to the next and the final output is an actual CAD model that can be used for further analysis.

Topics covered in this webinar:

*            Formulating the optimization problem including the model and design variables and setting up the integration platform

*            Generating a baseline mesh that isolates the area of interest and automating the parametric mapping for each design iteration

*            Locating the optimum twist distribution for maximum downforce using a genetic algorithm on a response surface

Phoenix Integration’s ModelCenter® is a vendor-neutral software framework for creating and automating multi-tool workflows, optimizing product designs, and enabling Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). It is used by leading organizations worldwide to reduce development costs, improve engineering efficiency, stimulate innovation, and design more competitive products. Successful applications can be found in multiple industries, including aerospace, automotive, defense, electronics, energy, heavy industry, and shipbuilding. http://www.phoenix-int.com/

Pointwise, Inc. is solving the top problem facing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) today – reliably generating high-fidelity meshes. The company’s Pointwise software generates structured, unstructured, overset and hybrid meshes; interfaces with CFD solvers such as ANSYS FLUENT®, STAR-CCM+®, OpenFOAM®, and SU2 as well as many neutral formats, such as CGNS; runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and has a scripting language, Glyph, that can automate CFD meshing. Manufacturing firms and research organizations worldwide have relied on Pointwise as their complete CFD preprocessing solution since 1994. http://www.pointwise.com

Pointwise is a registered trademark of Pointwise, Inc. in the USA and the EU. Pointwise Glyph, T-Rex and Let’s Talk Meshing are trademarks of Pointwise, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owner.