Study of an aero post rig and suspension optimizer software.

Abstract

The software and work method developed in this project will be a half car model where the transient behaviour of the car, obtained from CFD analysis, will be applied. It will be a half car model because it only needs CFD data of two movements: heave and pitch. The same concept applied in this project, once it is validated and proved, will be able to be extended to a full car model, being then necessary to simulate also roll movements. This is something very important and one of the reasons that this project will only deal with half car model: in order to simulate the full car model, the CFD analysis would be of the whole car, not only half like it has been analysed now, provided the symmetry of the car. These little changes would extend the CFD time to an impractical magnitude given the current resources, and would not provide a greater insight onthe subject, despite improving its accuracy.With the software created, it will be easier and faster to tune the suspension configuration of a car in two cases: 1.Configuration of a road car. Studying the response of the car in the frequency domain, the suspension can be tuned to optimize its response front all types of inputs.2.Configuration of a race car. Introducing a bump profile of a track, the software will give the optimum suspension configuration to maximize grip along the circuit and, in this manner, obtain best lap times. It’s important to remark that the value obtained ofeach parameter will not be the same that has to be adjusted on the car, because of the simplifications of a half car model, but they will give a right trend to follow in order to obtain the best set-upof the car.