www.engineeringnews.co.nz 21
“Sports cars don't really need lights,
but we've made our own version
of headlamps, which are faired into
the front guards,” continues Ryall.
“The intention is to put an LED light
strip where the headlamps would
normally go, just to have some lights
to flash if necessary.”
One of the things that prompted the
body project was that in the original
Juno the front splitter was just a
piece of plywood. “The original body
evolution project came from trying
to develop the plywood splitter into
something a little bit more useful
from an aero perspective,” says
Ryall. “A lot of the LMP cars at the
time were using concave surfaces
in the splitter so that a lot more air
was passing underneath the car and
around the hoops from the nose to
support the splitter. This led us to
doing more detailed CFD analysis of
the whole car and in particular the
front end.”
If you look closely, there are some
ground effect tunnel influences
and there is also more than a hint
of coke bottle shape in the rear
bodywork.
“We are redoing the wishbones
using aerodynamic sections at the
front to allow for a smooth airflow
through the tunnels and minimise
the interruption and disturbance to
the airflow,” says Ryall. “The tunnels
are continued right to the back, so
there is a considerable amount of
ground effect aero towards the back
of the car.”
The car will be fully equipped with
sensors to allow proper analysis of
any aerodynamic changes during the
development of the car.
From the initial CFD analysis there
is an increase of something like 40
to 50% in overall downforce from
the original Juno configuration. “Very
little real aerodynamic investigation
seems to have been done with the
Juno as it is currently shipped, so
a lot of this CFD work is pioneering
in this respect,” says Ryall.
“Aerodynamic efficiency has been
increased considerably and drag
has been reduced.
“This is all simulation data at the
moment, but eventually, when the
car starts to run on the track, the
information from the sensors will tell
us the aero forces and the drag,”
says Ryall. “The convergence in
the analytical models was good
and the correlation to the actual
aerodynamic performance on the
track should be equally as good.”
"SPORTS CARS
DON'T REALLY
NEED LIGHTS,
BUT WE'VE
MADE OUR OWN
VERSION OF
HEADLAMPS"
/www.engineeringnews.co.nz