Innoptus Solar Team: 10,000 seconds faster with INFINITE
In a conversation with Vincent Mertens (CFD Engineer Innoptus Solar Team) and Emmerick Vandervelpen (Technical CFD Consultant Infinite), they explain how such a super-fast solar car comes into existence.
The goal of the Innoptus Solar Team this year was to design a car that is 10,000 seconds faster than the previous solar car. In a conversation with Vincent Mertens (CFD Engineer Innoptus Solar Team) and Emmerick Vandervelpen (Technical CFD Consultant Infinite), they explain how such a super-fast solar car comes into existence.
Aero Departement
The car's design is mainly done by the aero department. Vincent is one of the three engineers in this department. He shares, "In the first semester, two of us work on the complete geometry, while one engineer focuses on the Ansys simulations and the results." Since the team builds a new car every two years, after that semester, the engineers who were working on the geometry move on to produce the car. Vincent later focused on simulations related to, for example, the wheel arch and "the secret weapon."
"The resistance of the car is one of the essential aspects to base the design of the solar car on. That's why our simulations set a direction for the other departments," Vincent explains. "Since we don't have a physical car at that point, all our decisions are made based on our CFD simulations."
Extensive Testing
Despite the numerous simulations, the final car also undergoes extensive real-world testing. "This way, we can verify if the results of our simulations match the final outcome," says Vincent. Fortunately, the test results align well with the simulation findings.
Besides the wind tunnel tests, the car is also tested on the circuit in Lommel, owned by partner Ford. "We can never precisely simulate how things will go in Australia, but there are large wind turbines that we can use to get an idea of how the car might react. This provides valuable training for our pilots," Vincent comments.
Collaboration
The collaboration with 4ITEGO, Innoptus, and Infinite adds significant value to the solar car's design process. "This year, we have helped the team a lot to automate the simulation process. Using scripts and handy tools, the simulation time per car has been shortened," says Emmerick, a technical consultant at Infinite. "We also provided the team with considerable support with Fluent Meshing and introduced them to the software." Vincent adds, "Thanks to the automation, we can now simulate one car in 2 hours, while previously it took much longer!"
From October 22nd to 29th, the World Championship for solar cars will take place in Australia. We'll then find out if all the improvements made to INFINITE are enough to finish 10,000 seconds faster than the previous car of the Innoptus Solar Team!