On the aerodynamic performance of two Silver Arrows from the thirties

Abstract

Two typical Silver Arrows from the thirties, one Mercedes-Benz W25 and one Auto Union Type C, were used to illustrate the simplicity and the capabilities of modern commercial CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) tools to mimic and compare the flow fields around these cars. In a Bachelor thesis carried out during the spring 2014 at Chalmers University of Technology, Bondesson et.al. (2014), six students with no prior CFD experience performed the computations presented in this paper. Since no CAD (Computer Aided Design) data was available on the full-scale cars, 1:18 scale model-cars from CMC-models were used, see Figure 1. The two models were 3D-scanned and reconstructed in order to obtain a detailed geometry needed for CFD simulations. Of course, the performance of these vintage race-cars is always of great general interest, and if these computations could increase the knowledge on the German Silver Arrows it would be an added bonus of this work.