Simulations and Modeling of Vehicle Dynamics and Aerodynamics Within a Teaching and Learning Environment

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 material. 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 teaching 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 engineering 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 experiments 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 students, 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. This goal, largely exceeding the students’ acquired skills, is achieved by building on the enthusiasm engineering students have in motorsport. Note, that the three-dimensional dynamics is theoretically introduced towards the end of this unit whereas in this proposed practical part it features from the beginning. Moreover, the approach proposed adds two learning outcomes to the unit of study; one is to become familiar with the general concepts of engineering design, and another is to gain familiarity with Computer Aided Design tools. Both will be further developed in the next years of study; CAD, CAE, CFD, in years two and three, and the project in the final year. The body of a Le Mans Prototype (LMP) Class 1 (LMP1) racing car is defined by CAD with the support of CFD simulations after the general concepts of racing car aerodynamics are introduced to students by using MS PowerPoint presentations, directed reading of papers, articles and videos, plus the examination of CAD models of prior or contemporary LMP1 designs, the use of a CAE Lap time simulation with lumped parameters of a sample LMP1 racing car, and finally the presentation of a CFD simulation tool embedded with the CAD tool.

2 The LMP racing car design exercise

Astonishing achievements have been made during the history of car racing. Car racing is a vibrant way of introducing physics concepts such as; Newton’s three laws of motion, forces in straight lines and circles and downforce, or distance, displacement, velocity and acceleration, momentum, energy, and power. All these concepts are the building blocks of the dynamic course offered to first-year engineering students. Newton’s second law can be stated in vector form as force equals mass times acceleration F=ma. Forces may act in one direction or the other, to accelerate or decelerate the motion. An unbalanced positive force will cause acceleration, the greater the force the greater the acceleration. Conversely, the greater the mass, the smaller the acceleration. Understanding of Newton’s law and intuition of the ways a flow around a body may translate in forces may permit the design of complex objects as a racing car. The activity is set up to run over 11 weeks, as 12 weeks is the classic duration of teaching during a semester of engineering education in Australia or the United Kingdom, with week 12 usually being the revision week. The activity requires 1 contact hour and 3 directed self-study hours per week, and it is conducted in groups of students. Week 1 - Basics of racing car aerodynamics The first step in the activity is to define the aerodynamic forces that are relevant to the car dynamics, basically what is drag and what is lift, how drag and lift coefficients are defined, how they are produced, and what is important in racing car aerodynamics to reduce the drag and create downforce, two requirements sometimes conflicting. This step requires a class MS PowerPoint presentation, plus the reading of online references such as [5, 14] or the reference book [25] and other references that the students could have found relevant in their search during self-study.

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Drag is the force that acts opposite to the path of the vehicle’s motion and it is unfavorable to vehicle’s performance because it limits the top speed and increases the resistance against the motion of the vehicle at every speed. Low drag vehicles have a streamlined shape, low frontal area, covered wheels and minimal openings in the bodywork. The drag performance of vehicles is characterized by the drag coefﬁcient (CD) which is deﬁned as:

FD CD = 1 2 /2ρV AF

FD is the drag force, ρ is the air density, V is the free stream velocity, and AF is the frontal area of the vehicle. Lift is the other of the two main aerodynamic forces imposed on a race vehicle. Lift can enhance the performance of a race car and decrease lap times by improving the cornering speed. Lift is the force that acts on a vehicle normal to the road surface that the vehicle rides on. Negative lift or downforce pushes the vehicle towards the surface it drives on. Working on the race car geometry it is possible to create negative lift. This may be achieved by increasing the pressure and shear stress forces differential from the upper and lower surface of the car body through the ground effect and the Venturi shaping of the lower surface, as well as the shaping of the upper surface including aerodynamic appendices such as spoilers and flaps or wings. The downforce enhances the car’s performance by increasing the normal load on the tires, thus increasing the ability of the vehicle to corner faster. The lift of the vehicle is characterized by the lift coefficient (CL) and is defined as:

FL CL = 1 2 /2ρV AT

FL is the lift force, AT is the area of the top surface of the vehicle, or sometimes, just for sake of simplicity, the frontal area AF . The LMP1-H car dynamic is simply described by applying Newton’s equations of motion to a point, Fig. 1. If Fp,e is the engine propulsive force, Fp,k the kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) propulsive force, Fb,f the friction brake force and Fb,k the KERS brake force, from Newton’s equation written for the longitudinal direction, it is:

Fp,e + Fp,k − Fb,f − Fb,k − Fa = m · a with m mass, a acceleration and Fa aerodynamic drag force,

1 2 Fa = /2ρV CDA

with ρ air density, v speed of the car, CD drag coefﬁcient (always positive for a retarding force) and A reference area. In terms of powers, by multiplying for the speed of the car v, it is:

dv 1 3 Pp,e + Pp,k − Pb,f − Pb,k = m · v · /dt + /2 · ρ · v · CD · A where t is the time. The tangential force at the tires is then simply taken as:

1 2 Ft = µ · m · g + /2 · ρ · v · CL · A

WJMS email for contribution: [email protected] World Journal of Modelling and Simulation, Vol. 15 (2019) No. 3, pp. 201-212 205 where µ is the friction coefﬁcient, g the gravity acceleration and CL the lift coefﬁcient (positive for a downforce). From Newton’s equation written for the tangential direction, along a curved path of radius r, the maxi- mum speed of the car v is given by:

v2 m = µ m g + 1/ ρ v2 C A r · · 2 · · · L · Despite being simple, once tuned with track and car data and telemetry results, this approach sup- plies a quite accurate representation of the car dynamic when covering one lap. Fig. 2 presents sample telemetry data (Audi R18 e-Tron Quattro 7 onboard with telemetry data 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours from www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FIXD76o7Ac). The data includes the speed of the car and speed of the engine, % brakes, % load (gas), gear, longitudinal and lateral g-force, and KERS (e-Tron) state. These data permit to setup the vehicle simulation parameters by reverse engineering. This is obviously done by the course developer, as the students must deal only with the drag and lift coefﬁcient within a working model. As a major achievement of the activity, the students get familiar with the relationship between force and acceleration, as well as force, velocity, and power, and ﬁnally, they understand the difference between power and energy and appreciate the opportunity to recover braking energy through kinetic energy recovery systems.

Fig. 1: The LMP1-H car dynamic described by applying the Newton equations of motion to a point

Week 2 - Wind tunnel aerodynamic experiments The second step in the activity is to ask the students to measure the drag and lift forces of a model racing car placed in a simple aerodynamic wind tunnel without any moving wheels or ground. The very simple set up may use just two scales to measure the lift and drag forces plus a pitot tube to measure the velocity. The differential measurements of forces are related to the geometry of the car and the speed of the air. The simple setup does not properly simulate the ﬂow around the racing car, as the ground should be moving relative to the car and the wheels should rotate for realistic conditions. Nevertheless, the simple set up permits the students to appreciate how the two forces that arise from the pressure and the shear stresses that are acting along the upper and lower surfaces of the car body are related to the airspeed. This is roughly what would happen when the car moves at a certain speed along the race track. Real measurements, even if simpliﬁed, are always superior to any computation to understand the under- lined physical phenomena. This second step requires an MS PowerPoint presentation with the relevant formula

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Fig. 2: Audi R18 e-Tron Quattro 7 onboard with telemetry data 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours (from www. youtube.com/watch?v=1FIXD76o7Ac).) needed to compute drag and lift from the monitored parameters, and the hands-on activity by the students to physically sense the two forces and eventually manipulate the balance between them by simple means as changes of the rear wing incidence. Week 3 C Getting familiar with Le Mans racing cars The “24 Heures du Mans” is the world’s oldest active endurance car race being held annually since 1923. Le Mans racing cars have been traditionally designed for the best possible aerodynamics, the lowest drag in the early days, and then the best compromise between drag and (inverse) lift when downforce was eventually discovered. The third step in the activity is to ask the students to familiarize themselves with Le Mans racing and with the rules that set the boundary conditions for designing a Le Mans Prototypes (LM- P) top class LMP1 car, obviously only accounting for the car body outline and wheels. This step requires an MS PowerPoint presentation plus reading online references such as [21]or[12], or the reference book [2], and other references that the student could have found relevant in their search as a directed self-study. In addition, it is proposed that the online reading of sporting events reports and the watching of YouTube videos www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FIXD76o7Ac and www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJJHsXgBAG8 is an in- tegral part of the learning process. Fig. 3 is an image of the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP, car number 9, winner 24 Hours Le Mans 2009. The latest rules for WEC prototypes are presented in [11]. Week 4 - Lap time simulations To better familiarize students with what they will be requested to design in the final step, the fourth step is introduced to the students using a lap time simulation tool. A detailed lump parameters description of an LMP1 car is provided. This step requires an MS PowerPoint presentation describing the principles of lap time simulations. Newton’s equation of motion for the car, in the three different components, is then introduced to students. Fine tuning of the car’s aerodynamics for lift and drag is needed circuit-by-circuit, as there is a clear trade-off between conflicting drag and lift requirements. A previously free to use software package performing lap time simulations, LAPSIM, [27, 31], was used. Students are requested to perform a sensitivity analysis of the influence of drag and lift coefficients on the lap times of LMP1 cars running on different race tracks. The LAPSIM workspace contains vehicle data but the plot menus are enabled, as can be seen in Fig. 4. Of the many parameters, students are requested to only change the drag and lift coefficients. No other changes are permitted. Selecting the animation option, the recorded data shows the complete vehicle running with driver inputs, looking like Xbox or Play Station car game the students would be familiar with. The simulation first calculates the speeds with which the car drives through the cornering points. Then the simulation starts to accelerate out of the first corner and to brake from the second corner backward. When

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Fig. 3: Peugeot 908 HDi FAP, car number 9, winner 24 Hours Le Mans 2009, beneath the podium just after the race. Laurence Penney - Own work. Created: 14 June 2009. CC BY-SA 3.0. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peugeot_908_HDi_FAP,_car_number_9, _winner_Le_Mans_2009,_beneath_podium.jpg$\sharp$/media/File:Peugeot_908_ HDi_FAP,_car_number_9,_winner_Le_Mans_2009,_beneath_podium.jpg. these two models meet their simulation, results are combined. At this stage, the students are able not only to understand but practically use Newton’s equation of motion to describe the dynamics of a racing car even if simply represented as a point moving along a curved path following the propulsive force of the internal combustion engine and the retarding forces of brakes and aerodynamic drag. The use of a lap time simulation tool and telemetry within an educational environment (undergraduate teaching) is also covered in [4]. In this case, LAPSIM, not free to use any more, was replaced by OPTIMUM LAP [17].

Fig. 4: LAPSIM screenshot with sample LMP car model and race track shown.

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Week 5 - Analysis of images and CAD models of LMP1 cars As a ﬁfth step, images of LMP1 cars are provided to students, as well as some detailed CAD models of LPM1 cars. A CAD software package is made available to students to visualize the sample CAD models of LMP1 cars. Some prior CAD knowledge is the only prerequisite of the activity. Students are requested to examine LMP1 cars models from the GRABCAD community, such as [6–10], or previously downloaded from the Roc-Inria.fr database. These models are provided to the student to understand how to shape a car by viewing what theoretically more expert designers have sorted out so far. As the models are “amateur” works, they are not free of inaccuracies and mistakes that the lecturer may use to promote the capacity of observation of the students. This step requires an MS PowerPoint presentation in class with an analysis of images and CAD models. The students are then requested to use the available CAD packages, in the speciﬁc case SOLIDWORKS [35] to further examine the car design during self-study. Fig. 5 presents the CAD model of the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP previously downloaded from the Roc-Inria.fr database.

Fig. 5: Views of a 2009 LMP1 Peugeot 908 HDi FAP. The model previously downloaded from the Roc-Inria.fr database

This prototype car was the second La Mans diesel powered car after the Audi R10 TDI. It was introduced in 2007, with a traditional powertrain, eventually winning the Le Mans competition in 2009 before retiring in 2010.

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The models may be viewed, further edited, for example, to close all the surfaces, reduce the scale, and eventually printed by using a 3D printer for wind tunnel aerodynamic tests to measure drag and lift forces. This latter option is not considered in the present activity, but it may be certainly included especially if aerodynamic wind tunnel testing would be preferred to CFD simulations. Week 6 - CFD Analysis of an LMP1 car As the measurement of drag and lift coefﬁcients of a model car in a wind tunnel is more expensive and time-consuming than a simulation, and without a proper modeling of the relative motion of ground and car and eventually of the rotation of the wheels in a traditional wind tunnel the results are inaccurate, SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation [34] is used to replace the model physical construction and the traditional wind tunnel experiments.

Fig. 6: Solidworks ﬂow simulations results for a 2015 LMP1-H Toyota TS030 hybrid

In SOLIDWORKS Flow, aerodynamic simulations are easily performed by using the wizard. This requires very few additional steps from the completion of the CAD model to have drag and lift coefﬁcients assessed. This sixth task requires an MS PowerPoint presentation plus the view of the relevant SOLIDWORKS tutorials and the presentation of a simple analysis ﬁle. Two SOLIDWORKS Flow models are provided to students, the model of a Porsche 919 hybrid and of a Toyota TS030 hybrid. Winner of the 2015 Le Mans race, the Porsche 919 hybrid has a 2-liter turbocharged gasoline engine and a hybrid electric power train. The Toyota TS030 hybrid has a 3.8 liter naturally aspirated diesel engine and a hybrid electric power train. The models were previously completed by the lecturer.

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More than performing high-quality CFD simulations, an achievement that would require further studies that not every student will undertake, is the relevance of the students appreciating the synergy between CAD, CAM prototyping, measurements, and CAE & CFD simulations. The Porsche 919H is modeled with the fixed ground and fixed wheels. This is basically the virtual ex- periment reproducing the simplified aerodynamic wind tunnel experiments. The Toyota 030 is modeled with moving the ground and rotating wheels. Both examples are provided to students to further examine during self- study. Fig.6 presents the sample computational results for pressure and streamlines obtained for the Toyota TS030. The use of SOLIDWORKS Flow for the analysis of racing cars within an educational environment (undergraduate teaching) is also covered in [4] and [3]. Weeks 7-10 - Directed bodywork design Students are then requested to develop a simplified CAD model of an LMP1 car working in teams. The opportunity to develop a racing car following mostly their intuition plus the introduction to an integrated CAD/CAM/CAE approach and experiments is a successful exercise where almost all the groups are eventually able to produce a design matching the requirements working as directed with weekly plenary discussions in front of the lecturer/tutor but no direct help by the lecturer/tutor. The simplified CFD simulation of the flow around the car is needed to further refine the design aiming at minimum drag for the desired lift. LAPSIM simulations are repeated with the baseline car model and the selected race track by only using the novel drag and lift coefficients and reference values for all the model parameters. Using this method students learn how to develop racing cars within the limits of knowledge and availability resources with a directed self-study fostered by communication and teamwork. Week 11 - Submission of a written report and oral presentation The students are finally requested to provide a report written according to the SAE template [22], detailing all the steps they followed to design the car body. The purpose of this Style Guide is to facilitate the development of high-quality technical papers. Essential reading concerning the content of the paper is found at [23]. The purpose of the template is to guide authors in applying styles to identify or tag each of the document’s elements. Correctly applying the style tags creates a document suitably formatted for review. Finally, the students are requested to deliver a short MS PowerPoint presentation in front of the class detailing the specific achievement of their group. Students are assessed not only in the actual design product but also in their ability to support their design. The proposed shapes are simple, but they include all the major ingredients needed to produce lift within a low drag constraint. Both the upper and lower surface of the car body are designed for the aerodynamic purpose.

3 Discussion

The LMP1-H racing car design exercise has been an exciting and dynamic challenge for undergraduate engineering students. This activity gives students the chance to experience design and testing. Teams use CAD/CAM/CFD software to create their LMP1-H Le Mans racing car. The activity is motivated by the success of the pre-university F1 in Schools program [16]. F1 in Schools is indeed one of the most successful STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) programs in the world and has reached 20 million sec- ondary school students in 40 countries. The LMP1-H racing car design exercise moves to a completely different level of sophistication of the F1 in School challenge, requiring the design, albeit only aerodynamic, of a realistic racing car compliant with the sporting regulations of one of the most successful racing series. What we learned from this exercise, is that students may become proﬁcient in design, while learning the building blocks of their unit, in this case, Newton’s equations of motion, due to their interest in motorsport. In engineering, there is still the opportunity to progress quickly while having fun and pursuing own interests. This is what makes engineering education challenging but professionally rewarding, perhaps more than other types of education. If replacing the current version of the practical exercises of the module by the project-based version proposed in this paper, the students are achieving the same learning outcomes by the end of the module plus two additional learning outcomes: (a) familiarity with general concept of engineering design; and (b) familiarity

WJMS email for contribution: [email protected] World Journal of Modelling and Simulation, Vol. 15 (2019) No. 3, pp. 201-212 211 with Computer Aided Design / Computer Aided Engineering and simulation tools. Both are assessed by the submission of the design report and a presentation. Moreover, it is also expected that the interest in dynamics, stimulated by the practical part of the module - design of a racing car, will result in better assimilation of the lecturing and tutorial material by students, hence resulting in better general outcomes of the module. It is then relatively easy to compare the results (how well the students meet the learning outcomes) between the old and the new version. Such a comparison can be performed by comparing the averages and the standard deviations for consecutive years of delivery. Another method, although not recommended, could be to split the whole cohort into two sub-groups of similar strength, each group being exposed to a different mode of operation run in parallel. However, more important than the immediate results would be to determine whether the project-based approach improves students interest in engineering and gives them more stimulation for further study and other modules. A satisfaction questionnaire could help to determine this. Although there are no results of such questionnaires for this module yet, a similar approach has been adopted in another module: level 3, Fluid Mechanics and the results clearly point to the advantage of project-based approach [33]. The original activity received a very high student satisfaction when conducted in the former University of Ballarat during the years 2009 to 2012, with almost 100% attendance to every class, despite the fact that the number of marks allocated to the activity was 30% of the total, and, more than that, a generally good understanding of vehicle dynamic, force, power and energy, and the principles of engineering design by the students. This was extremely rewarding for the lecturer in return for the extra effort devoted to developing the material. The activity is now to be re-proposed within universities following the British and the American curricula with the due changes.

4 Conclusion

We have reported about 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 within a teaching and learning activity aimed at introducing real-world problems and solutions to undergraduate mechanical engineering students. Proposed to ﬁrst-year B.Sc. engineering students, the activity, built on motorsport enthusiasm and the power of visual tools and resources, delivered to students a good understanding of racing car dynamic and aerodynamic, plus the ability to design a car body matching the need for low drag and high lift vehicles, with high Good Teaching Scale (GTS).

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