Flow Simulation

Drag Chart

Lift Chart

Combination Wheels Final Drawing

Flow Simulation

Drag Chart

Lift Chart

Combination Wheels Final Drawing

Design 1 - top picture and left center picture: Basic car design, slanted hood to direct the air smoothly up and out of the way, tires would be exposed like normal cars

Design 2 - Race Car design, slanted front and slanted back with wing, exhaust in back where air flows out

Design 3, similar to a rocket, comes to a rounded point at the front, tires would be located on the inside of the frame with fenders around them to redirect the air around the tire

After collecting data and seeing how aerodynamic the car is, I decided to make some changes to help reduce any drag the car may have. The car is still the same shape, and 9 holes were added symmetrical to the center if the car to help with the air flow. These holes will allow some of the air to flow through the car instead of around it, hoping to reduce the drag even more. 

First flow simulation test - turned out very successful. No red dots appeared, which showed that the car was pretty aerodynamic. Some changes will be made and adjusted to try and make it even better.

Second flow simulation test - even more successful. Air flow successfully flowed through the car, reducing the drag and lift. More green dots appeared, which shows that the car got even more aerodynamic. 

When the results were displayed, the current values displayed were sitting at about -0.40, and the goal was to get them as close to 0 as possible, which shows that the car wasn't too aerodynamic.

After these results were displayed, the current values increased a lot to around -0.19. This shows that adding these holes through the body of the car made it way more aerodynamic. 

Values of 0

Values of 0

Drag Graph

Drag Graph

Lift Graph

Lift Graph

Back view of the car after hydrodipping

Front/Side view of the car after hydrodipping

Side view of car after putting on the axles, painted wheels and washers

Isometric view of car after putting on the axles, painted wheels and washers

My time is on the left, finishing the 60 foot race track at 1.632 seconds, where the competitor on the right finished at 1.708 seconds

My car is on the left, competitor is on the right. Cars launch at the same time

Another perspective of the cars launching and starting the race

Slow motion video of the cars finishing the race and passing the photo gate

After launching the car, we quickly realized that the string to keep it going straight was not tight enough. It allowed for a lot of movement which made the car go left and crash into the photo gate at the end.

This is what the car looked like after crashing, it got tangled up in the wires for the photo gate and resulted in the car breaking towards the front. 

You can see where the car broke towards the front. I used a combination of hot glue and super glue to reassemble the car to make it last for the third and last race.

Because of the failure with the guideline string and car, it resulted in a DNF, or did not finish.  Hopefully the glue will hold the car together to get some sort of completion time for the third race.

The final time of race 3 was 1.342 seconds. That was .29 seconds faster, which is a big margin for a small track like this.

Despite the challenges faced in Race 2, the glue held up and I was able to complete the third race. The car beat its time in the first race, and it was definitely a success.

You can see here how the car bounces a little bit, If I were to redesign I would add more weight to the front to keep it from bouncing as much, but was extremely successful time-wise in the end

It is very clear that the car didn't launch as fast as it did in Race 1, but definitely accelerated quicker

Entire Formula Setup

Plugging Race Data into Formula