Symscape

Many see the future of automobiles to be electric, so it's only natural to assume that the same may apply to motor racing. Luke Horsfall is one who believes electric race cars have a bright future, having set up Horsfall Racing (along with Laura Horsfall) to build electric race cars and race them in the F24+ electric race car class in the UK. The restrictions of this particular formula keep budgets and speeds relatively low (at least by Formula 1 standards). Making best use of the limited power in F24+ is crucial, and that places the emphasis on low-drag, aerodynamic race cars. I bet you can guess where this is heading - this is territory ripe for Caedium's Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) capabilities.

Super Swoosh:Horsfall Racing's 2009 Electric Race Car

F1 in Schools is an international competition for student teams (aged 9-19) to design, analyze, build, and race CO2 jet-powered cars (dragsters). Beyond promoting Formula 1 (F1) to the next generation of fans, F1 in Schools aims to give a flavor of running an F1 team by exposing students to finance, marketing, and engineering. Of course the most exciting area (as in F1) is engineering, where students get to use state-of-the-art 3D CAD/CAM software to design and build their dragsters. Performance optimization through analysis of the dragster design is also encouraged, which inevitably leads to Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

Basilisk Performance's 2008 CO2 Dragster

This screencast shows an entire simulation performed using our Caedium Professional add-on; starting with geometry creation, motion specification, and physics definition, and finishing with transient 3D pressure coefficient contours on the wing surface. Using our intuitive drag-and-drop tools you'll see how simple and easy it is to simulate air flow within our Caedium unified simulation environment.

Multi-element airfoils are common sights on open-wheel racing cars and aircraft during take-off and landing.

Honda Formula 1 Car: Multi-element airfoils at front and rear