Overview

TotalSim have developed a cornering flow solver for their modified version of OpenFoam ®. An advantage of using cornering flow is that it is possible to have a different flow onset angle at the front and the rear of the car, this is compared to standard yaw where the onset angle is constant and equal to the yaw.

An image showing the wake of an F3 car in a corner

Solver and Meshing Changes

This page shows some of the initial testing of the code. The code has been written to fit in with TotalSim’s standard process.

The solver has been updated to include a centripetal acceleration term and an acceleration due to the Coriolis effect:

The meshing process has been modified to take a standard blockMesh and transform it, based on a corner radius, into a curved blockMesh.

A graphic showing the automated process to transform a block mesh

Results

Cz of the F3 car has been plotted against flow onset angle for the corner and standard yawed case

The F3 car was tested through a range of different corner radii. Cz plotted against the flow onset angle is shown right for the corner cases and a case tested to have an equivalent yaw at the front wing.

At small levels of curvature, the performance of the car is similar. This is because the flow onset angle is close at the front and rear of the car, as the curvature increases the difference between the flow onset angle and the yaw increases.

Delta Cp between corner and equivalent yaw. Curvature increases going left to right. Showing as curvature increases the difference between corner flow and yaw is increased.

All the plots and images in this page have been produced using TotalSim’s standard postProcessing software and is fully automated.

For more information about this module, please contact us.

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