Method of Validating the Importance of Aerodynamic (Drag) Parameters for Electric Racing Environments

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Method of Validating the Importance of Aerodynamic (Drag) Parameters for Electric Racing Environments

Szűcs, Gergely / Bári, Gergely / Sipos, Gábor

In the 21^st century, electric cars are forging ahead on the streets and taking over the place of combustion cars in the traffic. This process can be observed in the world of motorsports too. In the world of open wheelers, Formula E has begun in 2014, and from 2020 this will be an official FIA World Championship while in the world of tin-top racecars, Electric Touring Car Championship (ETCR) will start in 2020 too. One of the key differences between combustion and electric cars are the energy usage. In electric car racing, there is much less energy stored compared to the power demand for a given time, also batteries used nowadays heats up heavily, resulting in the fact that both the stored energy and the temperature of the batteries can be limiting factors on the car performance. Considering these facts, by switching to electric race cars, we need to revise the priorities between the components of performance. This way the effect and importance of drag need to be revised, as it can have more influence on race results than in case of internal combustion engine powered racing. In this paper, a validated simulation model is presented, and based on this model the importance of drag is investigated. According to simulations a very little (1–2%) change in the drag coefficient of the car results countable, because it can be mean 3–4 tenths in laptime, can still result many places on the grid, and can cause big differences during an overtaking maneuver.