Aerodynamics has played a significant role in the industry of motorsports in improving the performance and handling of the race car. Rob Smedley, the former head of vehicle performance at Williams Racing stated that - "Where teams have problems is when their development or simulation environment – so CFD [Computational Fluid Dynamics] or wind tunnel – doesn’t describe well what happens in reality (although in truth, no-one’s wind tunnel correlates absolutely 100%)". One of the reasons for this poor correlation could be arising from the fact that, in real life on track scenarios, the race cars undergo accelerating, decelerating, or cornering motion which can have a different influence on the aerodynamics of a race car which is not accounted for in the wind tunnel and simulation environment where a steady constant flow is employed. This research aims to numerically investigate the flow past the front wing of a Formula One car in ground effect subjected to accelerating and decelerating flows to understand the trends in the aerodynamic performance.

A scaling analysis is performed to determine the relevant non-dimensional numbers that influence the flow for translationally accelerating airfoils and two dimensionless numbers are arrived at, namely, the Reynolds number and the Froude number. Numerical investigations are carried out for translationally accelerating wings in ground effect to determine the influence of these dimensionless numbers on the aerodynamic forces.

Transient simulations were performed on a two-dimensional airfoil and a three-dimensional wing in ground effect subjected to translational acceleration and deceleration. The Shear Stress Transport (SST) based on k-ω was employed to model the turbulent flow. The results from the numerical investigations revealed a temporary change in the downforce and the drag force coefficients, as the airfoil (or wing) in ground effect is subjected to translational acceleration (or deceleration). In this study, the mechanisms that contribute to this temporary change in the aerodynamic force coefficients are discussed.