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This paper details the aerodynamic development of the University of Maryland's Pride of Maryland solar powered race car. This vehicle was built for the General Motors Sunrayce U.S.A., held in July of 1990. Two 3/8 scale models were built and tested in the university's wind tunnel. In addition, computational fluid dynamics and full scale testing were used to verify the design. Race experience further proved the worthiness of the design. Conclusions were drawn between the 3/8 scale model test results and the full scale results.

A critical aspect of the performance of the front wing of a Formula One or Indy race car is studied by idealizing it as a negatively cambered two-dimensional airfoil operating in ground effect and determining the fiowfield at various heights. When the airfoil operates at heights roughly equal to the airfoil thickness, significant negative lift is generated. As the height is decreased, there is an expected downforce reduction. The primary objective of this work is to elucidate the force reduction phenomena for the specific case of an inverted NACA 4412 airfoil traveling at high Reynolds number above ground in still air. This is the road condition. The secondary objective is to compare and contrast the fiowfield about this airfoil in road conditions and when operating in the wind tunnel environment, i.e. when the airfoil and the ground are not moving relative to each other.

Wind tunnel testing of reduced-scale models is a valuable tool for aerodynamic development during the early stages of a new vehicle program, when basic design themes are being evaluated. Both full-and reduced-scale testing have been conducted for many years at the General Motors Aerodynamics Laboratory (GMAL), but with increased emphasis on aerodynamic drag reduction, it was necessary to identify additional facilities to provide increased test capacity. With vehicle development distributed among engineering teams around the world, it was also necessary to identify facilities local to those teams, to support their work. This paper describes a cooperative effort to determine the correlation among five wind tunnels: GMAL, the Glenn L.