Towards a Novel Strategy for Safety, Stability and Driving Dynamics Enhancement During Cornering Manoeuvres in Motorsports Applications

Abstract

With aerodynamics research being primarily focused on drag and lift mitigation strategies till date, engrossed attention has not been received by the event of numerous accidents caused due to negotiation of turns at high speeds by formula and motorsport cars. We present an unexplored and innovative concept of variable side-flap mechanism with a peculiar orientation for introducing three components of forces in the event of turning. Numerical simulations have been performed at two notorious slant angle configurations of the generic ground vehicle body, namely 25° and 35°. In order to analyse the inception of variable forces and flow changes introduced by the flap mechanism, RANS modelling has been performed on nine cases of flap angles from 10° to 90° at six instances of Reynolds numbers between 1.98 × 10 6 and 2.98 × 10 6. In addition to the introduction of variable drag and downforce components leading to decrement in braking effort and enhancement in overall stability and safety characteristics based on steering input, our proposal holds potential for improving driving dynamics by imparting mild oversteer characteristics due to a flap-induced vortex. To conclude, a safe regime of flap operation in terms of flap angle based on drag, downforce and oversteering dynamics has also been recommended.