Why aerodynamics matter! - Performance, Safety, Environment

In this video, we’ll show you how aerodynamics can impact the performance, safety & environmental impact of your design! Let’s start with aviation. The most obvious field in aerodynamics. Now the pinnacle of airplane performance is the Red Bull Air Race. Apart from big engines and big balls, aerodynamics determine who wins and who loses. Australian team Matt Hall Racing used AirShaper to optimize the airflow around key components of their plane. They won several races that season and nearly took the overall win! Drones are another hot aviation topic Getting the aerodynamics right is crucial to fly as long and as far as possible on a single battery charge. For their latest model, the eBee X, senseFly ran several AirShaper simulations to optimize the vortex, or the corkscrew motion, of the air at the tip of the wings. By tweaking the vertical winglets together, we increased the aerodynamic efficiency by 30%! Aerodynamics also play a key role in performance sports, like cycling or skiing. We used a 3D scan of a speed skier to improve the aerodynamics of his stance & equipment. We helped him take his personal record from 198 km/h to a whopping 214km/h! At those speeds, aerodynamic forces dominate anything else! But what about safety? Let’s have a look at the Sunfold, a free-standing container equipped with solar panels at the top to capture and store energy! Tiger Power uploaded a 3D model of their entire system into AirShaper and analyzed the forces and the moments caused by the wind to see if would tip over. Luckily, it didn’t! The next step is to put all that renewable energy to good use, like efficient road transport. We benchmarked the Tesla Semi versus an optimistic generic truck and found a reduction in aerodynamic drag of around 20%! That’s over 5.000$ of fuel savings each year for a conventional truck, not to mention the reduction in emissions! So whether you’re cycling at 30 km/h, transporting cargo at a 100 km/h or racing at 300 km/h, aerodynamics matter big time. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The AirShaper videos cover the basics of aerodynamics (aerodynamic drag, drag & lift coefficients, boundary layer theory, flow separation, reynolds number...), simulation aspects (computational fluid dynamics, CFD meshing, ...) and aerodynamic testing (wind tunnel testing, flow visualization, ...). We then use those basics to explain the aerodynamics of (race) cars (aerodynamic efficiency of electric vehicles, aerodynamic drag, downforce, aero maps, formula one aerodynamics, ...), drones and airplanes (propellers, airfoils, electric aviation, eVTOLS, ...), motorcycles (wind buffeting, motogp aerodynamics, ...) and more! For more information, visit www.airshaper.com