International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology (IJRET) Vol. 1, No. 6, 2012 ISSN 2277 – 4378

Conceptual Design and Analysis of Ferrari F430

Godfrey Derek Sams1, Kamali Gurunathan1, Prasanth Selvan 1, V.R.Sanal Kumar2

while one 1949 Taylor 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 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 – came in and removal of the canard after it was found to have an 1917 via Wright Brothers rival 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 , 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 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.

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(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.

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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. 6 Numerical results showing the pressure distribution and imported into the mesh generator software. Some minor over Ferrari F430 at its maximum road speed (315 k m/hr). adjustments were made to this to correct the geometry and make it valid as a CFD model. Mesh generator is essential in the process of doing the CFD analysis: it creates the working environment where the object is simulated. An important part in this is creating the mesh surrounding the object. This needs to be extended in all directions to get the physical properties of the surrounding fluid – in this case moving air. The mesh and edges must also be grouped in order to set the necessary boundary conditions effectively. An environment consisting of two squares and one semicircle surrounds the surface. The mesh is constructed to be very fine at regions close to the model and with high energy, and coarser farther away from the model. For this model a structured polyhedral and trimmer mesh was used. Due to limitations in the available software, the mesh has to be fine also in certain regions far from the model. A fine mesh (a) implies a higher number of calculations which in turn makes the simulation use longer time to finish. For the model, the very front has an edge grid distributed with an increasing distance between nodes, starting from very small sizes. From the point of maximum thickness on the model to the very back an even number of points is distributed on the surface. Grid system in the computational domain is selected after the detailed grid refinement exercises. Figure 3 shows the surface mesh, Fig.4 shows the volume mesh and Fig. 5 shows the computational domain for both cases of Ferrari F430. The grids are clustered near the solid walls using suitable stretching functions. The car geometric variables and material properties are known a priori. Initial wall temperature (300 K), inlet total pressure (101325 Pa) and temperature (300 K) are specified. The Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy number is initially chosen as 3.0 in all of the computations. Ideal gas is selected as the working fluid. The code has successfully validated with the help of benchmark solutions. The total cell (b) count of Ferrari F430 flying car model is 400000 cells and the Fig. 7 (a-b) Numerical results show the pressure and the Mach number distribution over the Ferrari F430 flying car.

305 International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology (IJRET) Vol. 1, No. 6, 2012 ISSN 2277 – 4378 coefficient of both roadable and flying modal of Ferrari F430. IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS We observed that though the drag coefficient is significantly We concluded that with the proposed dimensions and increased while deploying the wings we have benefited with specifications the Ferrari F430 flying car with thrust to weight high lift coefficient. The results are presented in Table I. ratio 0.3176 will take off at 53 km/hr when the NACA 9618 TABLE I airfoil shaped wings are deployed in both sides. We also AERODYNAMICS CHARACTERISTICS OF FERRAI F430 CAR concluded that though the lucrative design of a flying car is a Ferrari F430 Ferrari F430 without wing with wing daunting task systematic 3D analysis can help the designer for Lift Coefficient 0.05 1.7 redesigning the existing high speed cars for commercial flying Drag Coefficient 0.24 0.54 cars. More tangible numerical results will be presented along The Table II shows the dimensions and specifications of the with the final paper. proposed Ferrari F430 flying car. Figure 8 (a-b) shows the different views of the Ferrari F430 flying car. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the management of TABLE II DIMENSIONS AND SPECIFICATIONS OF FERRARI F430 FLYING CAR Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore - 641 049, Height 2.03 m Tamil Nadu, India for their extensive support for completing Width 2.33 m this research work. Length 6 m Cabin width 1.37 m EFERENCES Front tread 1.67 m R Rear tread 1.42 m [1] Godfrey Derek Sams, Kamali Gurunathan, and Prasanth Selvan, Wheel base 3.02 m “Conceptual Design and Analysis of Ferrari F430 Flying Car”, Final Turn radius 7.31 m Year Undergraduate Project Report, Department of Aeronautical Baggage space 339.8 L Engineering, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore – Height(Baggage space) 0.3 - 0.45 m 641 049, Tamil Nadu, India, April 2012. Width 0.76 m [2] Haines, Thomas B. (19 March 2009). "First roadable airplane takes Weight empty 958.5 kg flight". Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). Retrieved Curb weight 1083.8 kg 2009-03-19. Weight loaded 1315.1 kg [3] Durbin, Dee-Ann (2012-04-02). "Flying car gets closer to reality with test flight". boston.com. Associated Press. Retrieved April 20, 2012. Wing span 6.85 m [4] Dietrich, Anna Mracek (2011-08-11). "Transition Equipment List". web Wing chord 1.27 m site. Terrafugia, Inc.. Retrieved April 20, 2012. Wing area 5.94 m2 2 [5] Mone, Gregory (2008-10). "The Driving Airplane Gets Real". Popular Body area 12.54m Science: pp. 42–48. Retrieved 2009-03-20. Wing +body 18.49m2 2 [6] Phillips, Matt (March 18, 2009). "Flying Car Takes First Flight". The Tail plane area 3.35 m Middle Seat Terminal (The Wall St. Journal). Retrieved 2009-03-19. Fuel capacity 151.4 L [7] Page, Lewis, "Terrafugia flying car gets road-safety exemptions", The Register, 4 July 2011; retrieved 11 July 2011. [8] Dietrich, Carl. "CEO, Terrafugia". Terrafugia. Retrieved 30 June 2011. [9] Flying Car" Moves Closer to First Delivery". Terrafugia. 2010-07-26. Retrieved 27 July 2010. [10] Haines, Thomas B. (2009-05). "Waypoints: From highway to airway". AOPA. Retrieved 2009-05-10. [11] Welsh, Jonathan (April 5, 2012). "Flying Car Maker Offers ‘Show Special’ Discount". Driver's Seat. Wall St. Journal. Retrieved 2012-07- 30. [12] Terrafugia’s Transition street-legal airplane continues flight and drive testing". Terrafugia. Retrieved 30 July 2012. (a) [13] Ryan, David L. (2009-03-18). "'Flying car' at the Museum of Science". Boston.com (The Boston Globe). Retrieved 2009-03-28.

[14] "First Flight for Terrafugia". Retrieved 2 April 2012. [15] Dietrich, Anna Mracek (2009-03-16). "TransitionSpecs-FirstFlight-200". Terrafugia. Retrieved 2009-04-02.

(b) Fig. 8 (a-b) Different views of the Ferrari F430 proposed flying car.

Cruise speed 87.4555556 m /s Range 600 nm Engine power 220 hp @3600 rpm burning about 7 gal/hr

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