Aerodynamic design and development of the Sunswift IV solar racing car

The aerodynamic design and development of the University of New South Wales\u27 ultra-low-drag solar-electric Sunswitt IV car is described, detailing the student-led design process from initial concept sketches to the completed vehicle. The body shape was established and relined over a period of six months in 2008-2009, almost entirely using computational fluid dynamics. The guiding philosophy was that predictable handling and drag minimization in challenging, changing wind conditions of the type commonly seen during the World Solar Challenge across Australia was preferable to high performance only on \u27perfect\u27 days. The car won its class in the 2009 and 2011 World Solar Challenges, and holds the Guinness World Record for last est solar-powered vehicle

Running on all cylinders - the integration of CFD and EFD for ground effect aerodynamics studies

Using ground effect aerodynamics as the example, the essential role of both Experimental Fluid Dynamics (EFD) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) will be highlighted. Examples from our studies in this area include the analysis of a Formula-style front wing and wheel, the study of dimples and the study of compressible flow ground effect aerodynamics. In many cases, CFD has been used to not only provide complementary information to an experimental study, but to design the experiments. We have found that laser-based experimental techniques provide an excellent means to compare to CFD. We have developed a post-processing method, making use of the kriging and co-kriging estimators, to develop correlations between often disparate data types. Using the case of the wing and wheel as an example, one dataset is gained from the combination of both LDA and CFD results, using a co-kriging analysis.15 page(s