International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology (IJRET) Vol. 1, No. 6, 2012 ISSN 2277 – 4378 Conceptual Design and Analysis of Ferrari F430 Flying Car Godfrey Derek Sams1, Kamali Gurunathan1, Prasanth Selvan 1, V.R.Sanal Kumar2 while one 1949 Taylor Aerocar is still flying today. Ford tried Abstract—Though the lucrative design of a flying car is a again in the 1950s, concluding that flying cars could be made daunting task many manufactures are making attempts for its and manufactured economically. Markets identified were the realization. In this paper numerical studies have been carried out to military, emergency services and luxury travel – now served, redesigning the Ferrari F430 car into a flying car with NACA 9618 at far greater cost according to Ford, by light helicopters. airfoil shaped wings. Detailed 3D CFD analyses have been carried The main concerns of the Federal Aviation Administration using a k-omega turbulence model. As part of the conceptual design (FAA) were lack of adequate air traffic control to handle optimization the lift and the drag coefficients of Ferrari F430 car with and without wings have been evaluated. The results from the hundreds of airborne vehicles, and problems such as parametric study indicate that the Ferrari F430 flying car with intoxicated pilots and flying without a license. The deployed wing will take off at 53 km/hr. international community would also have to agree on universal standards, the translation of air miles to nautical Keywords— Flying car, roadable airplane, low cost air taxi, miles, and so on. Above all, the FAA feared the impact of Ferrari F430 flying car. flying cars on urban areas, as shoddily built machines and pilots’ errors causing public nuisances. I. INTRODUCTION The modern flying car concepts like the Terrafugia Transition are showing remarkable promise. The Terrafugia HE flying car concept has been around since the early Transition is a light sport, roadable airplane under days of motoring, when intrepid aviators and auto T development by Terrafugia since 2006 [7-15]. The proposed pioneers envisioned a time when cars ruled the sky as design of the production version was made public at they did the road. The fact is that to date we don’t have a AirVenture Oshkosh on 26 July, 2010. Aerodynamic changes lucrative design of any type of flying cars for mass production revealed included a new, optimized airfoil, Hoerner wingtips, [1-15]. The first flying car – or roadable aircraft – came in and removal of the canard after it was found to have an 1917 via Wright Brothers rival Glenn Curtiss who – having adverse aerodynamic interaction with the front wheel been beaten into the air – designed the three-wing Curtiss suspension struts; furthermore, the multipurpose passenger Autoplane. The vehicle could only hop, but spawned an vehicle classification from the National Highway Traffic engineering race that, despite modern successes, has yet to Safety Administration (NHTSA) removed the requirement for come of age. a full width bumper that had inspired the original canard The open literature reveals that in 1926, Henry Ford design. After undergoing drive tests and high-speed taxi tests, unveiled the Sky Flivver, which wasn’t really a flying car but the Production Prototype completed its first flight on March captured the public imagination due to a clever campaign 23, 2012 at the same airport in Plattsburgh, New York that billing it “the Model T of the Air.” Ford hoped the Flivver was used for the Proof of Concept's flight testing. The flight would become the first mass produced and affordable plane tests followed months of high-speed taxi tests and thousands that could be maintained just like a car. The idea was abandoned when it crashed during a distance-record attempt, killing the pilot. Next came an effort by Waldo Waterman, designer of the first tailless monoplane (precursor to the flying wing) and modern tricycle landing gear. Waterman’s 1937 creation, the Arrowbile (or Aerobile – a development of his earlier design the Whatsit), was the first flying car to actually fly. With a wingspan of 38 feet, the Arrowbile could reach 112 mph in flight and 56 mph on the road. Despite the Fig. 1 Shows the Ferrari F430 reference car setbacks and lack of commercial success, not all flying cars were a disaster. The Convair Model 118 flew successfully, 1Bachelor of Engineering Student, Aeronautical Engineering, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore – 641 049, Tamil Nadu, India 2Professor and Aerospace Scientist, Aeronautical Engineering, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore – 641 049, Tamil Nadu, India; (Corresponding Author, phone: +91 – 938 867 9565; + 91 – 915 089 1021, Fig. 2 Shows the Ferrari F430 proposed flying car email: [email protected]). 303 International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology (IJRET) Vol. 1, No. 6, 2012 ISSN 2277 – 4378 of hours of wind tunnel and simulator sessions. The designers have been trying to build a flying car for a century, but only a few designs ever succeeded in flying through the air and driving on the road. The American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has shown an interest in the concept with a sixty five million dollar program called Transformer to develop a four place roadable aircraft by 2015. The vehicle is required to take off vertically, and have a 280 mile range. Terrafugia, AAI Corporation, and (a) other Textron companies have been awarded the contract. Flying cars fall into one of two styles; integrated (all the pieces can be carried in the vehicle), or modular (the aeronautical sections are left at the airport when the vehicle is driven). It is well known that existing flying car designs are expensive and the lucrative design of a flying car is a daunting task. Therefore more efforts must be put for the realization of a commercial flying car. In this paper an attempt has been made to convert the Ferrari F430 car into a flying car with (b) NACA 9618 airfoil shaped wings for low cost mass Fig. 4(a-b). Volume mesh distribution of Ferrai F430 without production [1]. Figures 1 & 2 show the Ferrari F430 roadable and with wing. car and the idealized physical model of the flying car through benchmark solutions. Therefore, this model has been respectively. used for demonstrating the flow fields of flying cars. Compressibility effects are encountered in gas flows at high II. NUMERICAL METHOD OF SOLUTION velocity and/or in which there are large pressure variations. Numerical simulations have been carried out with the help When the flow velocity approaches or exceeds the speed of of a three-dimensional standard k-omega model. This sound or when the pressure change in the system is large, the turbulence model is an empirical model based on model variation of the gas density with pressure has a significant transport equations for the turbulence kinetic energy and a impact on the flow velocity, pressure, and temperature. specific dissipation rate. This code solves standard k-omega Compressible flows create a unique set of flow physics for which one must be aware of the special input requirements turbulence equations with shear flow corrections using a and appropriate solution techniques. Compressible flows are coupled second order implicit unsteady formulation. In the typically characterized the total pressure P and total numerical study, a fully implicit finite volume scheme of the o temperature To of the flow. compressible, Reynolds-Averaged, Navier-Stokes equations is In this model the compressible flows are described by the employed. Compared to other models this model could well predict the turbulence transition and has been validated Fig. 5 (a) Computational domain for simulating Ferrai F430 roadable car. (a) (b) Fig. 3(a-b). Surface mesh distribution of Ferrai F430 without Fig. 5(b). Computation domain for simulating Ferrai F430 and with wing. flying car. 304 International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology (IJRET) Vol. 1, No. 6, 2012 ISSN 2277 – 4378 standard continuity and momentum equations with the total number of iteration is 250. The each iteration took inclusion of the compressible treatment of the density. The around 6 to 8 minutes so for completing a single simulation energy equation solved by the code will incorporate the we required 18 hours using a 16GB RAM configured system. coupling between the flow velocity and the static temperature. The viscosity is determined from the Sutherland formula. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION All boundary conditions for wall-function meshes will The external flow features are examined in both roadable correspond to the wall function approach, but in the case of and flying model of Ferrari F430. Fig. 6 shows the numerical fine meshes the appropriate low-Reynolds number boundary results of the pressure distribution over Ferrari F430 at its conditions will be applied. At the solid walls a no-slip maximum road speed (315 k m/hr). Fig. 7 (a-b) shows the boundary condition is imposed. An idealized physical model pressure and the Mach number distribution over the Ferrari is required for the simplification of the analysis. This is F430 flying car. Using the available numerical results an achieved using commercial software. Concurrently, decisions attempt has been made to estimate the lift and the drag are made as to the extent of the finite flow domain in which the flow is to be simulated. Portions of the boundary of the flow domain coincide with the surfaces of the body geometry. Other surfaces are free boundaries over which flow enters or leaves. The geometry is modeled in such a manner as to provide input for the grid generation. Thus, the modeling often takes into account the structure and topology of the grid generation. Ferrari F430 flying car geometry was acquired as a text file Fig.