Date of Award
Fall 2001
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Program/Concentration
Aerospace Engineering
Committee Director
Oktay Baysal
Committee Member
Colin Britcher
Committee Member
Drew Landman
Call Number for Print
Special Collections; LD4331.E535 M44 2001
Abstract
Since the goal of NASCAR racing is to win and since drag is a force the vehicle must overcome, a thorough understanding of the drag generating airflow around and through the automobile is greatly desired. The external airflow contributes to most of the drag that a car experiences and most of the downforce the vehicle produces. Therefore, an estimate of the vehicle's performance may be evaluated using a computational aerodynamics model. This thesis presents a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis of a NASCAR Winston Cup series race car to investigate the salient flow characteristics.
Before a computational analysis could be performed, a computer model had to be developed. This model was created from the measurements of the car obtained by using a laser triangulation system. Once a computer-aided drafting (CAD) model of the actual car was developed, the model was simplified by the removal of the tires, roof strakes, and modification of the spoiler.
The first computational part of the project was to determine an optimal mesh density. Henceforth, a mesh refinement study was performed. The mesh refinement study explored five cases with volume meshes ranging from 400,000 to 2,500,000 elements. The primary criteria used to determine the optimal density was the convergence of the computed drag coefficient. From this analysis, the case with 2,000,000 elements was selected as being optimal; hence this best mesh density was designated as the baseline case.
Qualitative and quantitative results were extracted from the computational results obtained from the baseline case. Qualitative results included flow visualization of the wake in the form of streamline and vector plots. Graphical plots of pressure and velocity distributions were also prepared to visualize flow characteristics. Quantitative results included forces to measure lift and drag and the body surface pressure distribution to determine the centerline pressure coefficient. When the computational results are compared to the experimental results, the CFD drag forces are expectedly lower than the experimental forces. This result is attributable to the differences between the CFD model and the actual car. For reference purposes, the results obtained using the meshes other than the baseline mesh are presented in an appendix.
Rights
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
DOI
10.25777/6mxe-rh15
Recommended Citation
Meek, Terry L..
"Computational Fluid Dynamic Study of A NASCAR Winston Cup Series Race Car"
(2001). Master of Science (MS), Thesis, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/6mxe-rh15
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/mae_etds/603
Included in
Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics Commons, Automotive Engineering Commons, Fluid Dynamics Commons