F1 in Schools help
 

Hi my name is Brett and i am involved in a program at school called F1 in Schools where we are required to design, test, manufacture and race a miniature F1 car. You are required to work in teams of 3-5 and you need to collect sponsors, have a portfolio showing everything that you have done, a verbal presentation and have a display booth on competition day etc.

We have won our state final and now move onto the national final which is being held at the Australian Formula One Grand Prix in late march.

I have been trying to do some CFD tests on our car to see what changes need to be made without machining it to test in the wind tunnel. Although i cant get fluent to work no matter what i do and the organisers have supplied us with a very basic version of phoenics that just lets us put in our model and get results from that. The only problem is I cant get it to converge properly so the results are never correct.

Here is a few pics of our car so that you can see what it is like
http://i48.tinypic.com/2mws6rl.png
http://i48.tinypic.com/zy6g1.png
http://i45.tinypic.com/2q099mq.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/10o3zvc.png


I know that this is a really big thing to ask but would anyone be willing to run a test on my model if i gave it to them and they would get recognition at the national final which will also get us more points for collaboration.

If not would anyone be willing to point out an easy cfd program to use or give me some step by step instructions for fluent.

Thanks
Brett

Caedium CFD Simulation
 

Hi Brett,

Thanks for sharing your geometry - here's a glimpse of the CFD results from Caedium Professional. For the full set of results try our rendered gallery.

http://i47.tinypic.com/29z3h5k.png

Dear Richard,

What did you use for meshing the geometry? snappyHexMesh?
do you have some pictures of the mesh too? I didn't saw any in the link you give.

Regards,

Vincent

Mesh Details
 

Hi Vincent,

I used Caedium's native triangle and tetrahedral meshers. In total there were ~360K elements.

See the image below for a closeup of the surface mesh on the car, symmetry plane, and ground.

http://i49.tinypic.com/bg22yf.png

Full Story
 

For anyone following along, you can read more of the story behind this CFD analysis of an 'F1 in Schools' CO2 dragster at:
http://www.symscape.com/examples/rans/cfd-f1-in-schools

You'll also find a reference to the complete Caedium project file (.sym) there too.

2009 F1 in Schools Australian Champions
 

Congratulations Brett and Basilisk Performance on becoming the 2009 F1 in Schools Australian Nation Champions. The 2009 event was held last weekend (March 27, 2010) so it could share the date, venue, and excitement with the Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix.

To find out how CFD influenced the design of Brett's dragster try:
http://www.symscape.com/news/new-aus...ped-by-caedium

Full Disclosure: Symscape is a sponsor of Brett's team Basilisk Performance