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Aerodynamic design optimization of race car rear wing

Article · June 2011

DOI: 10.1109/CSAE.2011.5952758

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 Aerodynamic design optimization of race car rear wing*
YANG Zhigang, GU Wenjun, LI Qiliang
Shanghai Automotive Wind Tunnel Center
Tongji University
Shanghai, 201804, China
Gwjwin@163.com
Abstract—The process of design and numerical calculation for
rear wing is traditionally accomplished by manual interference,
and the numerical results usually discuss the relation between
aerodynamic forces and a single design parameter of rear wing.
Computer program of wing profiles and two scripts were
created in this paper such that the process of design analysis of
a rear wing ranging from geometry generating and meshing to
the numerical calculation can be fully automatically handled.
This automatic design and analysis process was applied to the
PACE 2008 global vehicle collaboration project, and as many
as 4725 numerical cases due to the variations of five
parameters were calculated using the computer program.
Compared with original design, the process yielded a design
with a six percent increase in downward force and a five
percent decrease in drag.
Keywords—race car rear wing; aerodynamic optimization;
numerical calculation
I. INTRODUCTION
Great attention has being paid to the aerodynamics of
race car as the race car is always at a high-speed condition
compared with ordinary cars. The key to the aerodynamic
research and development of race car is to provide enough
downforce, minimum aerodynamic drag and good directional
stability. Rear wing is one of the essential parts of the
aerodynamic package of the race car, whose main role is to
increase downforce at various road conditions at high speed.
However, the existence of rear wing inevitably increases the
aerodynamic drag of the car. How to balance the downforce
and aerodynamic drag has been a current concern of R & D
engineers and related race car enterprises.
Numerical and experimental studies on the aerodynamic
performance of rear wing have been involved for some time.
Jiang and Kang[1,2] had researched the impact the wing
profile and the angle of attack had on the aerodynamic
2 (2 px  x 2 ) x  [0, p)
performance of a hatchback car. The research shows that the
attack had an impact on both lift and drag coefficient, while
the height from ground influenced the lift coefficient.
The previous studies have provided a basic understanding
of the aerodynamic characteristics of the rear wing, and
optimization of individual parameters of wing has also been
involved. However, aerodynamic characteristics of rear wing
are affected by many parameters, such as angle of attack,
camber and thickness of airfoil, etc. Consequently, it’ll be
importance to the optimization design of rear wing if the
optimization can be oriented based on more samples with
comprehensive investigation into the parameter changes as
well as automatic computation of the aerodynamic
characteristic.
II. OPTIMIZING METHOD
The computer program used in this study is fully
automatic in the design optimization of rear wing
aerodynamic, which is different from previous ones which
were accomplished with manual interference. The program
can not only automatically generate the shape of the rear
wing but also call mesh processing software GAMBIT to
process grid and CFD software FLUENT to calculate and
output the results.
The main-aileron mode is commonly adapted on the rear
wing to conform to FIA rules. The airfoil is often referred to
in the design of the basic shape of a rear wing, since airfoils
have the similar function. Although there’re many aircraft
airfoil series, only some series have corresponding formula
to determine the shapes. Due to that condition, we chose
NACA airfoil families. According to the rules of the four-
digit NACA airfoil families, when camber m, the maximum
curvature position p, thickness t and chord length c is given,
the shape of the airfoil can be determined by (1) to (3).
 m
 y c
 p
  m  

installation of rear wing did improve the wake structure and  yc
[(1  2 p) 2 px  x 2 ] x  [ p, c]
the car's aerodynamic characteristics. Coiro D P, et al [3] 
 (1  p ) 2

systematically studied the aerodynamic performance of a

multi-element airfoil which was applied in rear wing, using
both numerical and experimental methods. Kieffera W, et al t
[4] started an optimizing research of front wing on a Mazda   yt
(0.2969 x  0.1260 x  0.3516 x 2 0.2843x 3  0.1015x 4 )   
0.2
Formula car, and numerically computed the angle of attack
and height from the ground, which showed the angle of

*Supported by National Basic Research Program of China (2011CB711200)

___________________________________
978-1-4244-8728-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE


  xU
x  yt sin  Load mesh file
Zoom & smooth the
Solver setting
Boundary condition


grid setting

 yU
yc yt cos
  xL
x yt sin    
 Exit FLUENT
Export downforce &
Initialize & iterate Monitor setting
 y L
yc  yt cos
dargforce(*.rpt)

dyc
whereǂ
arctan( )
dx Figure 3. Flow chart of FLUENT script.

Visual Basic 6 is used to write the program generating
the rear wing shape according to the formula. Fig. 1 shows
the program interface. The program uses 18 parameters to
determine the shape of the rear wing curves, processing and
outputting them as a point format file accepted by GAMBIT.
It can even be operated under the command-line mode.
These 18 parameters include the 8 main wing parameters, 8
aileron parameters, number of point outputted and file name,
of which the airfoil parameters including curvature,
maximum curvature position, thickness, angle of attack,
vertical flip, front point coordinates as well as the scaling.
The full automation of optimal design of rear wing
aerodynamics can be realized based on the rear wing curve
generating program as well as the two script codes. Fig. 4
shows the flow chart of the automatic control cycle. The
range of the rear wing parameters is determined at first, and
then the parameters are changed by certain step size to obtain
all the data of their influence on the aerodynamic
performance. Its control process is as follows: first of all
the required rear wing parameters for the current calculate
are acquired. Then the wing curve is drawn accordingly and
imported into GAMBIT for automatic meshing. Afterwards,
the grid file will be imported into FLUENT, automatically
calculated. With the final data of downforce and
aerodynamic drag obtained and saved as a file on a reliable
disk, the computer completes one calculation process, and
gets ready for the next parametrical calculation.

Define the variable Compare the results

range of rear-wing & find optimal
parameter parameter

Yes

Pick up a parameter
& No Finished?
create the curve file
Figure 1. Interface of rear wing curve generating program.

Script code for GAMBIT and FLUENT is written to

realize automation of mesh generating and aerodynamic
numerical computation. Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 show their flow Create the script for Export the result to
charts. The script code of GAMBIT includes some GAMBIT(*.jou) files(*.prt)
conventional means of mesh processing, such as initializing
the software, importing curve points, creating the
computational domain as well as dividing the boundary No
layers and so on, while script code for FLUENT includes
reading, checking and smoothing the grid, selecting Import the curve file
Import the mesh file
turbulence model, setting boundary conditions, determining into the GAMBIT
to FLUENT & solve
convergence and outputting results. and export the mesh
the problem
file
Create surface &
Initialize GAMBIT Create boundary
Load Curve File computational
(RESET) layer
domain of rear wing

Mesh file is Create the script for

Setup boundary Yes
Export to .msh file
condition type
Create other mesh vaild? FLUENT(*.jou)

Figure 2. Flow chart of GAMBIT script. Figure 4. Flow chart of automatic cycle control.


 III. PARAMETER SETTING AND NUMERICAL COMPUTATION parameters may bring changes of total grid number, the
number won’t change a lot.
A. Parameter setting
Optimal design of the rear wing involves various
parameters. While computations for all parameters will be
the most comprehensive, because of the limited computing
resources, the less influential parameters are ignored when
applying the above optimization method in this paper,
retaining only 5 parameters, including the main wing camber,
main wing thickness, aileron camber, aileron thickness and
aileron angle of attack. Range of these parameters is shown
in Table I, with a step size of 1.5 correspondingly. In
addition, the initial settings mentioned in the table are
determined according to a certain rear wing. Parameter
changes will be set based on the combination of initial
settings with previous experience. Compared with the initial
settings, the final optimization results can be got. Figure 5. Rear wing grid of initial plan.
TABLE I. PARAMETERS OF RACE WING
Within the framework of the commercial software
Wing Parameter
Initial
Range FLUENT, k-ε turbulence model [6] and non-equilibrium
setting wall function can be used to calculate the turbulent flow. The
Camber(m1) 15.5 14~17 incoming flow speed of velocity-inlet is set to 55.6m/s, or
Maximum curvature position (p1) 4 invariant
200km/h; while the local static pressure of the pressure-
outlet is 1 atm. Symmetrical boundary condition is applied
Main Thickness(t1) 12 9~15 on both sides of the computational domain, with no-slip wall
wing Angle of attack(a1) 2 invariant
conditions applied to the wing surface. The cases are
considered to be converged only when the residual drop
Coordinates (x1,y1) (0,0) invariant under 10-4 with the second order numerical schedume and
Scaling(s1) 1 invariant the aerodynamic forces are no longer changing.

Camber (m2) 15.5 14~17 IV. RESULTS

Maximum curvature position (p2) 4 invariant Fig. 6 shows numerical results of aerodynamic forces
with diverse parameters. It can be seen that all the data points
Thickness (t2) 12 9~15 are distributed in two regions. One of them is the dense
Aileron
Angle of attack (a2) 30 24~60 dashed area where the downforce is proportional to the drag.
The other one is on the upper left, a sparse area
Coordinates (x2,y2) (0.85,0.1) invariant perpendicular to the first part, marked by dot dash line. In the
Scaling (s2) 0.6 invariant first region, all points are densely distributed in a curve, and
the aerodynamic drag tends to increase with downforce. It’s
a reflection of the basic contradiction between the downforce
B. Numerical Computation and drag, i.e., greater downforce comes with greater
According to the parameter settings shown in table 1, as aerodynamic drag. According to the distribution of all data
many as 4,725 cases are to be calculated, thus three- points a curve is drawn so that all points are on the upper left
dimensional calculation will bring a huge consumption of of this curve. To achieve the optimization goal, the
time, which is unacceptable. As a result, only two- optimization project has to realize greater downforce and less
dimensional calculations are taken, which is also valuable aerodynamic drag at the same time, which means the closer
because there is essentially no change with the cross- the parameters are to the right bottom, the better the
sectional area, and the end panel will further reduce the optimization project is. Therefore a conclusion can be drawn
three-dimensional effect. that parameters of the optimal project must be closer to this
The two-dimensional grid of wing meshed by GAMBIT curve. This curve can be called the optimal design curve. It is
is shown in Figure 5. It can be seen from the figure that to also observed that the points close to the optimal design
better simulate the flow inside boundary layer, the prism curve are not unique, so the choice is depended on which is
layer is created around both the main wing and the aileron, more likely needed: a greater downforce or a smaller
thus the y + of the wall can satisfy the requirements of the aerodynamic drag.
non-equilibrium wall function [5]. The computational
domain is 6 times of the chord length (defined as unit length)
both in the length and width, which is fully filled with up to
20 thousand triangular meshes. Though the changes of grid



Figure 6. Distributions of downforce and aerodynamic drag.
In Fig. 6, point 1 represents the downforce and
aerodynamic drag of the initial program. According to the
initial program, the optimal point should be at the lower right
of point 1, which is the domain of greater downforce and less
aerodynamic drag. Point 2 is chosen as the optimal project
because of "the-closer-the-better" criterion. Based on the
numerical results obtained, it can be calculated that the
downforce of the rear wing increases by 6.0% while
aerodynamic drag decrease by 5.0% compared to the initial
optimization. Obviously the 5.0% improvement is quite
impressive when the initial project has been fairly good.
What has to be emphasized is point 2 is the optimal result of
a comprehensive consideration of both downforce and drag
force based on the initial project. But if the initial project is
not taken into account, there will more than one optimal
project, for example, point 3 which has the maximum
downforce, or point 4 , which has the minimum drag force, is
also desirable. The structure of every optimization program
and their corresponding improvement of downforce and
aerodynamic drag are respectively shown in Table II, Table
III and Fig. 7. It should be noted that every optimization
project is obtained by changing 4 to 5 parameters based on
the initial basic parameters at the same time, which can
hardly be achieved by change a single parameter; even
experienced engineers can hardly imagine it.
TABLE II. OPTIMIZED PLANS(DOWNFORCE)
Point Description downforce improvement
1 Initial plan 7884.7 / downforce and aerodynamic drag increase with the angle of
2 Optimized plan 8359.4 6.0%
3 Max. downforce 9389.3 19.1%
4 Min. aerodynamic drag 6778.9 -14.0%

TABLE III. OPTIMIZED PLANS(AERODYNAMIC DRAG)
aerodynamic
Point Description improvement
drag
1 Initial plan 741.1 /
2 Optimized plan 704.1 5.0%
3 Max. downforce 1019.7 -37.6%
4 Min. aerodynamic drag 550.8 25.7%
(1) Initial plan (2) Optimized plan
(1) Max. downforce (2) Min. aerodynamic drag
Figure 7. Configurations of optimized plan.
As for the data points in the second region, all
concentrated in the case of aileron having large angle of
attack. In Fig. 8 downforce and aerodynamic drag
distribution chart is redrawn in accordance with the aileron
angle of attack, from small to large. With the aileron angle of
attack changes from small to large, downforce and
aerodynamic drag are changing along the trajectory of 1 ė 2
ė 3, as shown in Fig. 8. That is, when the aileron angle of
attack is small, with the angle of attack becomes larger and
larger, the downforce and aerodynamic drag increases. When
the angle of attack reaches a critical value, the downforce no
longer increases, but decreases along with aerodynamic drag.
When the angle of attack continues to increase, downforce
keeps decreasing, but there will be a rapid raise in
aerodynamic drag. It can be seen that when the angle of
attack is too great, no more downforce can be provided, but
sharp increase happen to aerodynamic drag, which is
absolutely need to be avoided when designing the rear wing.
In order to more clearly show the relation between the
angle of attack of aileron and the aerodynamic forces, their
relation curves are drawn as shown in Fig. 9. It can be
observed that when the angle of attack is less than 46°, both
attack. The downforce and aerodynamic drag decrease with
the angle of attack increasing from 46° to 51°. However, the
downforce decreases and the aerodynamic drag increases
with the angle of attack increasing above 51°. In addition, it
can also be seen from the figure, when the aileron has an
angle of attack of 38° or so, downforce performs good and
aerodynamic drag doesn’t increase fast. This conclusion can
be used as a reference to the design the rear wing too.[For
this part, are the other four parameters fixed? Does the
conclusion vary with the other four parameters are changing?]
Figure 8. Relation between angle of attack of aileron and aerodynamic
force.
Figure 9. Relation curve between angle of attack of aileron and
aerodynamic force.
V. CONCLUSIONS
In the optimization design of race car rear wing,
traditional manual intervention is abandoned in this paper,
and an automatic cycling method is proposed. With writing
the computer program, the automation of parametric

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modeling and numerical computation of the rear wing is
realized, and the efficiency is improved.
When the angle of attack of aileron is small, the
downforce and aerodynamic drag both increase with the
angle of attack increasing, which means they are to the left of
the optimal curve. According to the principle of ‘greater
downforce and less aerodynamic drag’, an optimization
project is determined which is of 6.0% more downforce and
5.0% less aerodynamic drag compared to the initial one. The
corresponding airfoil structure can hardly achieved by
calculating and comparing single parameter. When the angle
of attack of the aileron is large, the downforce decreases with
the angle of attack increasing, while the aerodynamic drag
increases with it, which has to be avoided when designing
the rear wing.
It should be noted that though the fully automatic cycling
method improves the efficiency a lot, the cost for three-
dimensional computation is sill unacceptable. As a result,
Design of Experiment (DOE) method is necessary to be used
in searching for the optimization method of the three-
dimensional cases.
REFERENCES
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& Power Technology, 2005, 1: 10-13.
[2] Kang Ning, Jiang Yan. The study of aerodynamic characteristics of a
notchback car with rear wing at different angles of attack[J]. ACTA
Aerodynamic sinica, 2006, 24(2): 233-237.
[3] Coiro D P, Nicolosi F, Amendola A, Barbagallo B, Paparone L,
Beccio S, Castelli P. Experiments and numerical investigation on a
multi-component airfoil employed in a racing car wing[J]. SAE
Special Publications, 1997, 1232: 221-226.
[4] Kieffera W, Moujaesb S, Armbyab N. CFD study of section
characteristics of Formula Mazda race car wings[J]. Mathematical
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