CFD for a Formula SAE car
 

I am working on a Formula SAE team and I am trying to develop the aerodynamics package for the vehicle. They only problem is my school does not have a CFD program. The team does have copies of Solidworks which does have limited CFD capability (only for internal flow). I was going to look at the possibly of getting sponsored by a CFD software company but I am not really sure what to look for. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dear Robert,

I cant recall the post, but there has been postings on this forum sometime back (maybe a few months to a year) regarding exactly the same problem of modelling a race car with CFD. Maybe searching the archives maybe of help.

Regards,

Ganesh

I used the search function and I couldn't really find anything as far as what I am looking for.

Robert,

a simple search on Google for "formula sae cfd" will bring you enough resources to start on this, especially the third link: http://www.sae.org/servlets/cdsNews?...ELEASE_ID=1086

You can also look at publications and case studies to see which CFD companies sponsored other teams and approach them.

regards
-Lorenzo

alternatively use an open source code such as openfoam

Ansys has added a new CFD tutorial for Formula teams that walk-through CAD simplification and cleanup on real FSAE geometry (from the University of Pittsburg FSAE team), proper mesh settings and quality metrics, boundary conditions, run, and post processing:
https://courses.ansys.com/index.php/...an-fsae-car-2/

Ansys also provides full versions of their software to student teams:
https://courses.ansys.com/index.php/...an-fsae-car-2/

Robert, Solidworks has an addon called "solidworks flow simulation" that can do both internal and external CFD analysis. If you go through the tutorials of SWFS you would most probbaly find an example similar to yours

I would hope that after 13 years, Robert is no longer stuck doing tutorials. Can we keep dead threads dead and not necrobump them?

Well, as far as I understood Robert had access to Solidworks and I was suggesting that SWFS was capable of doing what he wanted. Referring to a tutorial was to confirm that.

And yes, car aerodynamics is one of the most popular and well covered CFD topics so the thread could be killed.

I would not recommend Solidworks Flow Simulation for FSAE external aerodynamics for a few reasons:
1) It's not accurate for external flow on FSAE cars. It lacks the needed wall models and mesh models to appropriate resolve the boundary layer, and therefore flow separation is not accurately predicted. For example, it does not actually put thin cells next to the wall (inflation layers/prism layers) to give data within the boundary layer. This is critical considering the number of wings other devices like the undertray that need accuracy here. It also does not have the appropriate turbulence models for external aero (usually K-W SST is recommended).
2) It struggles to run on higher cell counts due to the lack of ability to scale well wrt running on multiple cores.
3) Post processing is limited.
4) FSAE judges know the above points and do not take the results for it seriously. Multiple teams have told me the judges tell the teams to use a professional CFD tool such as Fluent.