My Latest CFD work

Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg

Hello again.

So, that's the February exams over, so now I can continue with my biggest passion, Aerodynamics. And as you can see above, I used the in-house Fluid Simulation that Solidworks provides. Yes, Solidworks does not have the best CFD software, but I do have Ansys, and I am currently doing some work here. But more on that soon.

Here you can see two simulations I have performed, one involved fluid flow around a cylinder, which represents a tyre. The other is a simple wing or aerofoil. Starting with the cylinder, I applied a velocity of 100 m/s which is about 220mph at the cylinder. And as you can see, the flow is laminar before it comes into contact with the cylinder.

As the flow interacts with the surfaces, the flow remains attached to the surface of the cylinder, until a stage where the flow becomes detached, thus causing drag. This is one of the biggest factors to take into account when designing a race car.

The flow detachment is down to the boundary layer, where it can no longer run along the surface, and so causing turbulence in the form of a wake, as the lines demonstrate. 

Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg

For the second simulation, I performed the same, but on a fairly aggressive aerofoil geometry, as you can see. In the image above, you can see the velocity of the air, as it passes over/under the aerofoil. The red demonstrates the highest velocity speed, where the lowest is shown in blue. This speed and pressure difference is what causes downforce for race car wings.

Pic: Stefan Ruitenberg

Here is another screenshot, which shows the pressure plots in Pa. You can see the most pressure is caused by the air stalling, at the very tip of the aerofoil shape.

You can expect lots more CFD simulations from me in the near future too, both in Ansys and Solidworks. Take care guys!