Optimization of Blowing Devices to Improve Rear Diffuser Performances

Abstract

The rear diffuser represents an important tool to increase the vertical load of a high-performance car. In order to improve its effectiveness, a solution based on flow blowing is considered. Different geometrical scheme of the blowing were considered. To make a corrected comparison between the different solutions, an optimisation procedure were applied to each geometrical scheme. Coarse tetrahedral grids are used during the optimisation process, while a final verification with a very refined grid is presented to validate the results. More than 2500 different configurations are analysed, spending one month on a 16 nodes linux cluster. Final results show that important increase in the down-force, without drag penalization, can be obtained by using flow-blowing devices.