Comparative study of the aerodynamic performances of motorcycle racing wheels using numerical cfd simulations

Abstract

In motorcycle competitions, aerodynamics play a fundamental role. In order to improve the performance of racing motorbikes, different front-wheel geometries have been studied by means of numerical CFD simulations. Different lean angles were analysed for each geometry and the air motion-field were calculated. The considered geometries range from standard spoked design to solid wheels. Both steady-state and dynamic simulations were run using the open-source free software OpenFOAM®. This open-source code was selected because, like all the computer programs of this type, it allows a higher flexibility with respect to any close-source commercial software, allowing a customization of the code by implementing specific models for the analysis of the physical problem of interest and also, at the same time, a higher parallelization of the computations. Steady-state simulations were performed using a rotating reference frame (MRF) while, for the transients, a partially-rotating mesh was adopted, thus taking advantage of the internal sliding interfaces (AMI). Drag, lift and force-moments have been calculated with the aim of examining the stability and manoeuvrability of the different configurations.