NCMARC Builds Aero Package for SRT Viper Race Car

In the optimization of a super car, UNC Charlotte motorsports researchers are using super computers and some super brain power to set up a complete computational fluid dynamics modeling and analysis program for an American Le Mans Series racer.

The super car is the SRT Viper GTS-R, which is manufactured by SRT Brand and Motorsports, Chrysler Group LLC. SRT Motorsports is partnering with Riley Technologies, based in Mooresville, N.C., on the design-and-build process for the new SRT Viper GTS-R race cars.

“We are working with Riley Technologies on the aero development and optimization programs for the car,” said Dr. Mesbah Uddin, the director of the North Carolina Motorsports and Automotive Research Center at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Uddin is one of the world’s leading authorities on aerodynamics. For the SRT Viper project, he has also brought in the talent of mechanical engineering doctoral students Brett Peters, Chen Fu and Meighan Read.

“Working on this project has been a great opportunity for us,” Dr. Uddin said. ““There are so many more aero devices on a sports car compared to a stock car. When it comes to aero devices, an American Le Mans Series car is incredibly advanced.”

In the SRT Viper racer project, students spent most of fall 2012 getting a highly accurate model of the car into the computer. “What is very important is that the first model be as realistic as possible,” Dr. Uddin said. “Now that the car is modeled digitally, we can start virtually changing components to see what gives us the best performance on the track.”

The computational modeling research requires the use of CFD codes and an immense amount of computing power. To perform the work, the team uses UNC Charlotte’s high-performance computing clusters, which include more than 2,200 computing cores that can perform 75 trillion computations per second.

“We’re trying to model through computers what happens on the track,” said Ph.D. student Brett Peters. “At the end of the day we’re most interested in how we impact the lift and drag coefficients of the cars. These are what make us go faster or slower. Figuring these out involves thousands of variables, which is what makes this research demanding and fascinating.”

Working on the SRT Viper GTS-R has been a valuable and exciting learning experience for the students. “We are not just working on a supercar,” Peters said, “but the race car. The facilities we have here and the computers we have, especially the supercomputers available, rival any private motorsports program. We may be up late at nights working on our projects, but it’s definitely worth it.”

Just as the SRT Viper GTS-R race team is focused on taking the checkered flag first, so too are the students who are part of the UNC Charlotte Motorsports Program. On the track and in the classroom, they set the bar high and continue to reach new heights day in and day out.

“In motorsports if you are static, you are losing,” Peters noted. “That’s how we look at it. We are always improving our product. By product, I mean the software and the people that are using the software and the hardware.”

For more information contact Dr. Uddin.

The SRT Viper aero team in the top photo (left to right): Meighan Read, Chen Fu, Dr. Mesbah Uddin and Brett Peters.