Flow control for a car-mounted rear wing

In this paper, experimental and numerical results are presented on an active car wing with a moving spoiler placed beneath it. It was shown that movement of a small element, i.e., the spoiler, can result in a significant change of downforce generated by the car body, equivalent to changing the rear wing's angle of attack by several degrees. A 1:2.5 scale car model, equipped with several moving surfaces, was tested in a wind tunnel to establish the aerodynamic coefficients. During wind tunnel tests, all force components were measured for various wing and spoiler configurations. Visualization techniques such as oil and mini-tufts were used. Numerical simulations of wind tunnel configurations were validated with the use of wind tunnel test data. Different turbulence models were considered and a good accuracy with the wind tunnel results was achieved.