![]() ![]() With the solid model and quilts defined, the team automatically generated a uniform surface mesh on the car, and then selectively refined areas of interest. It was in the team's best interest to simplify the topological complexity of the model by assembling quilts into larger collections that represented engineering surfaces, such as the left and right side of the canopy, the front of the vehicle, the top of the vehicle, and the fairings. Their geometry was very clean, so it was easily assembled into a single water-tight model representing the vehicle, and consisting of 46 quilts.”įigure 4: Anisotropic mesh refinement captures flowfield details with fewer cells.Ī quilt is a logical meshing region where a surface mesh will be generated and boundary conditions applied. “The next step is what's called Solid Modeling. “The first thing Rachel saw when she imported her data into our mesh-generation software was a model of the car consisting of a number of different surfaces,” explained Travis Carrigan, a senior engineer at Pointwise. Over 40 Pointwise Meshes Helped Create Arctan ![]() The on-road test miles also serve to train our race crew and to get the drivers really familiar with the car,” Abril said. “We put about 4,000 test miles on the car to shake out any bugs – first at a racetrack and then on public roads. The car then went from simulation and validation to on-road testing. Once the car was built and rolling, the team took it to a wind tunnel to verify the CFD results with guidance from SU2 developers David Manosalvas and Dr. ![]() The basic numbers that we're always aiming for are low drag and zero lift.” “We always have to figure out ways to work around these things. “Some challenges that we always face are the packaging of mechanical components like the suspension and driver, along with race regulations that tend to limit aerodynamics,” Abril said. The team's other key partners were Fort Worth, Texas-based Pointwise for CFD mesh generation and Tecplot of Bellevue, Washington, for data visualization and analysis.įigure 3: The aerodynamics tool-chain with SU2 CFD Code, Pointwise Meshing and Tecplot Visualization & Analysis. The main reason the Solar Car team used SU2 was for computational fluid dynamics. Developed in Stanford's Aeronautics and Astronautics Department, SU2 is an open source collection of C++ software used for multi-physics simulation. The development of Arctan marked the first time the team brought the entire aerodynamics tool-chain in-house, in large part because of their partnership with SU2. We do systems analysis to try to find a good compromise.” “As for aerodynamics and solar array, they basically define the speed of the vehicle, and sometimes they have competing interests when designing the car. If your car breaks down and you can't finish the race, you're out,” she explained. She joined the team back in 2013, and for the most recent 2015 cycle she specialized in mesh generation and mechanical design analysis, and was also a driver.Īccording to Abril, three big factors are key to winning the race – reliability, aerodynamics and solar array. With the aerodynamics of the vehicle playing a critical role in its performance, the Stanford Solar Car Project team developed a repeatable design-simulation framework consisting of Pointwise for rapid hybrid mesh generation, SU2 to run the CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations, and Tecplot 360 EX to post-process and interpret the results.įigure 2: The Stanford Solar Car Project Team with Arctan.Īcting as the Solar Car team's aerodynamics co-lead was Rachel Abril, a master's student in mechanical engineering. The latest vehicle in their lineup, Arctan, took sixth place out of 45 teams in the 2015 competition, covering the 3000 km in just over 41 hours. The Stanford Solar Car Project, a student-run, nonprofit organization within Stanford University, has been designing and building solar cars since 1989, and arrives in Darwin every two years with a stunning new vehicle. But every two years teams from around the world converge on Darwin, Australia, to make the journey to Adelaide in the solar-powered cars they have engineered specifically for the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. And doing it in a solar-powered vehicle is an even bigger challenge. The Stanford Solar Car Project's Race for Aerodynamic EfficiencyĬhasing the sun 3000 km across the Australian Outback is a grueling test. ![]()
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