Do racing cars electrify your heartbeats? Do their high speeds enthusiast you to know how they can reach such high speeds, here is the answer. Aerodynamics plays the most vital role in controlling a car in and enabling it to reach super high racing speeds.
Formula Student particularly gives a wide range of freedom in the aerodynamic design. Aerodynamic Engineers at IITRMS focus predominantly on aerodynamic package optimizations and very innovative designs. With a wide range of airfoils and no such defined parts, various possibilities open up.
Competition circuits are full of tight corners and less long straight sections. Hence, we aim towards maximum acceleration rather than maximum speed. Even if we consider accelerating from 0 to 100 Kmph, we aim towards a very high acceleration. We follow a low-speed aerodynamic design, our main motive being reducing the drag. Rather, increased downforces generated by our aerodynamic package facilitate towards shorter lap times. Speeds at which our wings faces the incoming air leads to a lot of phenomenons. One of them is the separation of air flow leading to bubbles. Ever wondered bubble formation betwwen flowing air?
Due to steep curves, although we have low speeds for a major range of the circuit, but at the same time, crosswinds(Ok, so what is that?) and yaw angle(Hmm?) has a high effect on the overall cornering stability of the vehicle. Thus, we aim to design our aerodynamic parts in order to sustain more comfortably on corners.
Currently, our package consists of the front and rear wings, side pods and the car nose. We have used jute fibers and glass fibers for the manufacturing of our nose, side and rear body, along with the side-pods. We aim to develop the wings(both front and rear) comprised of carbon fibers. We are in process of further optimization of the wings and great emphasis has been given to the development of an undertray model for our future cars.
We, here at IITR Motorsports, aim towards working with the efficiency and flawlessness, the same expected by our models to thrive through the field. Just, never believe you have reached the perfect end. There are unlimited possibilities for improvement still to be achieved in the near future.
The Electric Powertrain