Simulations and Modeling of Vehicle Dynamics and Aerodynamics Within a Teaching and Learning Environment
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ISSN 1 746-7233, England, UK World Journal of Modelling and Simulation Vol. 15 (2019) No. 3, pp. 201-212 Simulations and Modeling of Vehicle Dynamics and Aerodynamics within a Teaching and Learning Environment Albert Boretti1;2 *, Andrew Ordys3, Sarim Al-Zubaidy4 1 Department for Management of Science and Technology Development, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2 Faculty of Applied Sciences, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 3 Military Technical College, Muscat, Oman 4 The University of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago (Received November 24 2018, Accepted May 31 2019) Abstract. We report about a teaching and learning activity aimed at introducing real-world problems and solutions to undergraduate mechanical engineering students. The activity is based on the use of computer-aided engineering (CAE), computer-aided design (CAD) and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) tools to study the dynamic and the aerodynamics of a Le Mans prototype car LMP1. Working models, as well as experimental results, are used to progress with students towards the design of a car perfected within given constraints for drag and lift coefficients for the specific race track. The activity coupled the opportunity to achieve high Good Teaching Scale (GTS) to a quality learning experience. Keywords: CFD, CAE, CAD, teaching & learning 1 Introduction Teaching and learning in higher education are dramatically changing in recent years. Goals of the different providers are to produce graduates having competitive advantages versus the graduates of other universities, with the ability to be job ready a major requirement for the engineering discipline. In the United Kingdom, the leading provider of higher education worldwide, a Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) [1, 30] has been recently (2017) added to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) [20, 24]. The REF is the system for assessing the quality of research. The TEF is the system for assessing the quality of undergraduate teaching. Apart from issues about the specific metrics of the era of REF and TEF, there is no doubt about the relevance of teaching and learning activities aiming at real-world problems and solutions. Here we report about one of these activities, employing real-world tools such as computer-aided engineering (CAE), computer-aided design (CAD) and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) to study the dynamic and the aerodynamic of specific racing cars. This paper describes teaching and learning (T&L) activity developed to introduce design and dynamics concepts to first-year B.Sc. engineering students. The method uses an integrated CAD/CAE approach to shape the body of an LMP racing car and it is based on two software products made available to students: SOLID- WORKS, a CAD platform, and LAPSIM, a lap time simulation tool. Online resources, images, videos, articles and CAD models that the students further integrate through their searches, complete the proposed teaching ma- terial. By building on motorsport enthusiasm and the power of visual tools and resources, it is possible to get out of first-year students a good understanding of racing car dynamic and aerodynamic, plus the actual design of a car body matching the need for low drag and high lift vehicles. The fluid dynamic module of SOLIDWORKS ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] Published by World Academic Press, World Academic Union 202 A. Boretti, A. Ordys and S. Al-Zubaidy: Simulations and modeling of vehicle dynamics and aerodynamics is also introduced to students. The break down by week of the different activities is proposed in detail to enable reproducibility. In the past, engineering design has not been the primary focus of engineering education. It was then mostly left to companies to provide this training to graduates. However, the engineering community more than the academy is now calling for more emphasis on design, communication, and teamwork, and this call has translated in explicit requests by some accreditation bodies to foster the design abilities of engineering students. For example, the Engineering Council UK specifies design related requirements that the courses must have to be accredited as “engineering courses”. The requirements start with identifying the need, including public perception and business constraints. This must be followed by an engineering definition of the problem and setting up the constraints. The work on the design project must consider incompleteness of information, which must be incorporated in planning the activities. Only within this framework, the analytical and technical knowledge is to be applied to arrive at a feasible solution. One of the main aspects which differentiate the teaching of design and teaching through design from teach- ing in a more traditional rigor is working with information which is uncertain and incomplete. This leads to open-ended problems and the development of intuition and motivation which are the main requisites engineer- ing students should possess to become designers. Both qualities may be promoted through a proper teaching and learning path. One of the most famous engineers of the past was Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci was passionate about aviation. He was excited by the possibility of people flying like birds. Without any support of a well-established physical framework or the availability of CAD/CAE/CAM tools, Da Vinci designed his famous flying machines through his power of observation and imagination, his enthusiasm for flight, and the ability to transform ideas into products (the first characteristic that makes an engineer different from a physicist or a mathematician) and the willingness to test to explore new boundaries. Today’s engineering students do not have to be Da Vinci but it is important for them to learn the power of dreaming and give shape to their ideas through design, in this case, a partially guided procedure where a CAD/CAE/CFD tool is finally used to define the product. Students make observations by reading selected references, acquiring knowledge through selected exper- iments and simulations and examining the prior state of the art products developed by others. This ultimately permits them to develop a constrained original design. Note that this approach is applied to early stage (first year) engineering students i.e. at the beginning of their university career. Those students will not yet possess a large number of analytical skills nor will they have acquired all necessary science and mathematics knowledge for their designs to fully meet engineering standards. This is sometimes called ”upside-down”; the delivery of a module of teaching starts with posing a design problem. During the design process, students are made aware of the need for analytical skills and scientific and mathematical knowledge, hence their interest in developing those skills is stimulated by demonstrating their usefulness in solving engineering problems. Eventually, the students develop those skills through directed self- study and on-demand presentations by the lecturer. The passion for motorsport is the final ingredient for stu- dents, allowing them to understand physical principles even before receiving proper mathematical and physical background. Thus, they can then develop the ability to design forms for a scope C best compromise of a car body between aerodynamic drag and lift C based on these principles. Application of problem-based learning and project-based learning at all levels of study has been reported in many publications, for example [13]. Integration of project-based learning with computer simulation and, more widely with Information Technology environments is presented in [15, 26] and [32]. [19] provide examples from several Universities in Australia and in the UK. A single module or even the whole curriculum of the study can be designed in such a way that students are engaged in practical problems, related to their discipline, from the very beginning of their studies. An example from Coventry University, [37], is the approach called Activity Lead Learning (ALL), where all engineering students work solely on projects, in interdisciplinary teams, for the first six weeks of their study. Exposing students to practical problems from the very beginning makes them feel being engineers C this is what they selected as their career in the first place. [28, 36], [18] analyze the effectiveness of a problem-based WJMS email for contribution: [email protected] World Journal of Modelling and Simulation, Vol. 15 (2019) No. 3, pp. 201-212 203 approach to teaching and conclude that interactive, problem-based learning improves students’ achievements in their studies. Following from the above background, this paper reports on the strategy originally adopted as part of the first year Bachelor of Engineering Science unit “Fundamentals of Engineering (Dynamics)”. The whole unit was delivered in Semester 2 and consisted of 3 hours of lecture, two hours of tutorials and 1 hour of practical activities per week. The contents of the unit are typical for this subject, as covered in many textbooks, e.g. [29]. The topics lectured to students and the expected learning outcomes include kinematics and kinetics of particles, the kinetics of systems of particles, plane kinematics and kinetics of rigid bodies, and introduction to three-dimensional dynamics. The lecturing material is well supported by tutorial exercises, which are also available online. The practical part of the unit consisted of a series of typical lab experiments. Despite an excellent textbook(s) and a broad range of tutorial exercises, it was observed that students were finding it difficult to engage with the subject. Making a link between the theory and engineering practice was not realized by the practical experiments. Hence, it has been proposed to enforce this link by replacing the standard, and somewhat outdated, lab experiments by a design problem. Through this design problem, based on Newton’s equations of motion, the goal is to stimulate the students’ abilities to progress from basic concepts of lift and drag forces to the definition of a constrained shape of a racing car compliant with sporting regulations.