Best paper/presentation award for PACE Formula 1 car CFD project

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Satyan Chandra and Dr. Steve Gorrell with the PACE Car.

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Image of the PACE car from the CFD simulations

A team of Mechanical Engineering students from Brigham Young University won the Best Paper/Presentation Award at the PACE Forum hosted by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 27-29, 2011.

Led by Professors Greg Jensen and Steven Gorrell, Satyan Chandra and Allison Lee worked on the project.

As part of the PACE program, the Formula 1 car was developed in a collaborative effort between 26 different universities in 10 countries. Several companies, including GM, Siemens and HP are also part of the consortium. This project focused on using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to understand how the Formula 1 car would behave during high speed maneuvers, in order to ensure stability at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour.

“There is nothing that has wowed me more than cars and airplanes,” commented Chandra. “I love cars, and am very passionate about Automotive Engineering. I taught myself to drive in the 4^th grade, and have a professional racing license. Naturally, this project was very appealing to me!”

Chandra, originally from India, worked with Allison Lee, a senior from Mesa, AZ, to learn the Star-CCM+ CFD software, perform the simulations and analysis, write the paper, and organize the presentation. “It was a comprehensive research and development effort,” said Chandra. “The focus was first to obtain accurate and highly representative aerodynamic representations of the car, optimize the design of the front and rear wings, and then work on the presentation and the paper for the conference and hopefully later publication.” The research also involved working with engineers from CD-Adapco, whose product is the CFD package Star-CCM+.

The project came away from the PACE Forum with the Best Paper/Presentation award. Dr. Jensen presented the paper, which was an analytical study on air flow effects and resulting dynamics on the PACE Formula 1 race car. The study incorporated Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis and simulation to maximize down force and minimize drag during high speed maneuvers of the race car. Using Star CCM+ software and mentoring provided by Dr. Lorenzo Crosatti, Application Engineer from CD-Adapco, the simulation employed efficient meshing techniques and realistic loading conditions in order to understand down force on front and rear wing portions of the car as well as drag created by all exterior surfaces. The study also ensured safety of operation and allowed for optimization of performance for racing conditions.

“This particular CFD project spanned eight months and included students, professors, and industry representatives,” stated Chandra. “We spent lots of late nights, with lots of troubleshooting and overcoming difficulties. It was truly a challenge with the sheer complexity of it. But there was nothing I would have rather done.”

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Best paper/presentation award for PACE Formula 1 car CFD project