Team vulcan
Forgers of Speed
thecar
Car ace
Car Ace has two main aerodynamic features. The first being, the protective side pods. (Green) These side pods leads the air smoothly across the car without hitting the front and back wheels. The second feature is the bottom of the side pod (Blue) that send the air away from the rear wheels. This ensures that there is a minimal amount of pressure on the rear wheels. Of course this car has got room for improvement. Firstly the wings were designed in a curve so the wind was sent to the rear of the car creating turbulence. The other bad feature on this car was that the back ramp. It was to steep so the wind did not flow as smoothly as it could.
Car Phantom
Car Phantom’s main purpose from the initial sketch was to protect the front and rear wings from the wind. As you can see from the pressure picture this was very successful with the back wings, but not with the front ones. The reason being that wind got trapped beneath the wings and created turbulence. Another aerodynamic feature of this car was the triangular rear wings, that sent the wind away from the rear of the car so that turbulence was not created. The biggest problem with this car was discovered during the manufacturing process. We found that the wings was much too thin and would easily snap during the sanding phase, or even in the race.
The final car
Although this car mainly looks like car Ace, there are two features we took from car Phantom. The first one was the longer front wing and the second was the triangular rear wings. The front wing was an improvement because it was more flat, making it easier for the wind to flow across the side of the car. The triangular rear wings sent the wind upwards instead of sending them to the back of the car and creating turbulence. The other change was that we made the ramp shorter so that the wind would flow easier, but still protect the rear wheels. As you can see from the pressure picture on the right the pressure has largely decreased in all areas of the car.
