Active Winglets Aerodynamics of a Supersport Motorcycle
2022-01-0442
03/29/2022
- Event
- Content
- In this highly competitive environment of motorsports, aerodynamics plays a pivotal role in determining a motorcycle's riding characteristics. It can enhance the maneuverability of the motorcycle, which can improve several attributes. A moving motorcycle experiences predominantly two forces, drag and lift. During the initial acceleration, the motorcycle has a lifting tendency, resulting in lateral pitch motion known as wheelie because of inertial effects. The application of fixed winglets can produce sufficient front-end downforce to reduce the lift. This also helps in the prevention of accidents and improves road safety. However, at higher speeds, excessive downforce can hinder the potential top speed and compromise the performance. The application of active winglets can significantly counter this adverse effect caused by the fixed winglets. Active aerodynamics is a relatively newer concept in the context of motorcycles, which enables the changes in orientation of the wings according to the need of the scenario. It can change the wing's angle of attack at higher speeds to reduce the drag force encountered and achieve high speeds. This research aims to examine the effect of the active winglets system upon the drag and lift of the motorcycle at different velocities. The solid modeling of the winglets and motorcycle with rider and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was performed in commercial software packages. It was found that in the first configuration of the winglets, there was a 13.79% increase in downforce, and in the latter one, there was an 8.27% reduction in the drag force as compared to the stock motorcycle.
- Citation
- Nath, D., Pujari, P., Jain, A., Tomar, M. et al., "Active Winglets Aerodynamics of a Supersport Motorcycle," SAE Technical Paper 2022-01-0442, 2022, .