For my senior design project, I collaborated with General Motors to establish a correlation between results obtained from CFD analysis and wind tunnel testing for the 2020 C8 Corvette. The goal of this project was to establish if software simulation could reduce the need for wind tunnel tests in the early development of new Corvette models. A secondary goal was to develop an aerodynamics package for the new C8 that would optimize its downforce to drag ratio for use on a race track.

Our CFD data was collected through the Solidworks Flow Simulation package. In order to collect our wind tunnel data, we 3D printed a small scale model of the C8 and designed an experimental rig to test downforce and drag at Duke's wind tunnel lab. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic prevented us from accessing this lab after March. We determined that the incomplete wind tunnel data we had collected to this point was inadequate to accurately evaluate its correlation to CFD results, and so we were forced to a adjust the goals of our project.

Shifting to remote work, we now focused on the development of the aerodynamics package. The downforce and drag ratio of each iteration was determined in Solidworks, and these values were then fed into LapSim, a software designed to estimate lap times of vehicles around various race tracks. Compared to the original C8, our aerodynamics package showed a lap time improvement of 5.0 seconds or 3.9% on the Barcelona-Catalunya Race Track.