The #F1SimStar submission explained

On the occasion of their three-week F1 workshops, SimScale and Nic Perrinn are launching a competition to look for the most creative visualization of airflow around a Formula 1 car. The rules?

  • The visualizations must be created using the F1 car simulations provided on their F1 page.
  • Every participant is allowed to submit a maximum of 3 images. Every image must be based on a different simulation.

These are my three images.

General aerodynamics

F1SimStar_Session1_02

Close-up of Perrinn’s F1 car coloured by pressure coefficient in a scale of greens. The symmetry plane is a surface LIC visualization of the air, coloured by speed in a scale of blues. We can clearly appreciate the air bending around the rear wing.

Slip stream

F1SimStar_Session2_04

 

The two F1 cars are very close to each other. Body surface color represents the pressure coefficient in the classic rainbow scale. In addition, a contour plot representing the reference pressure has been included to show how differently the leading and trailing car interact with the freestream.

Overtaking manoeuvre

F1SimStar_Session3_02

What would the leading driver see from his mirror o a rainy day? Probably just a white cloud, but streamlines give us a close approximation of rain’s trajectory if its Stokes number were much smaller than 1 ($\text{Stk} \ll 1$). That’s why wind tunnels use smoke, with low Stokes number, to visualize complex dynamic flow phenomena.

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