Hypercars?
You know that the vehicle is special, a rarity, perhaps an exotic model when you hear the term Supercar.
When you hear the term Hypercar, you know that the vehicle is one of the top performers on the planet.
A supercar is a world-class vehicle, but a hypercar pushes the boundaries of the possible while generally being produced in more limited quantities.
Racing Hypercars?
When it comes to racing hypercars, speed and aerodynamics go hand in hand. The more aerodynamic the car, the faster it goes. And on the straights of the 24 Hours of Le Mans circuit in France, drivers in the 2023 top-class hypercar field clocked well over 330km per hour.
Among the contenders battling for the podium was Peugeot Sport, which made its long-awaited return to Le Mans with the PEUGEOT 9X8 Hybrid Hypercar. Turning heads on and off the track with its striking design, the 9X8 combines innovative aerodynamics and styling to give the car its unique, sleek silhouette.
Dassault Systèmes and Peugeot Sport, the motorsports division of Stellantis, on April 26, 2024 announced their partnership to simulate and optimize the aerodynamics of the PEUGEOT 9X8 Hybrid Hypercar for the 2024 endurance racing season, and demonstrate high-performing electric mobility in motorsports that creates value for Stellantis’ automotive brands.
Pushing creative limits in Peugeot 9X8 hypercar
In many ways, the 9X8 represents what’s possible when you combine creative freedom and advanced technology. New regulations allowed Peugeot Sport’s engineers to think outside of the box when it came to achieving the hypercar’s specified performance levels, allowing them to focus on smart aerodynamics on the car.
Critically, they were able to test and verify every aspect of their bold concept in the virtual world first, saving significant time, money and resources. Before so much as a single component of the car was physically made, the 9X8 existed in the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform’s virtual environment, where engineers harnessed its sophisticated design and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation capabilities to fine-tune their ideas and define the car’s major characteristics.
Validating aerodynamic performance through simulation
Unlike previous regulations which limited what competitors could do with the car’s aerodynamics, the new LMH rules gave Peugeot Sport the opportunity to focus more on the car’s underfloor. With this setup, air travels through tunnels and is squeezed at the point closest to the ground to generate downforce. A certain level of downforce must be reached to be in the performance window and the rear wing usually helps with that.
To balance the car aerodynamically, the rules permit the use of a single adjustable aerodynamic device (AAD), fitted to either the front or the rear. However, there are a huge number of variants in between.
“Through simulation, we could evaluate an unlimited number of options for the AAD system,” Jansonnie said. “A digital approach meant we could try out very diverse concepts and have answers in a matter of days or weeks. For example, the car’s front splitter can vary in height and shape. Designing, building and testing multiple physical front splitters is too costly, but totally possible in the virtual world.”
Peugeot Sport and Dassault Systèmes have now run over 3,000 CFD simulations using SIMULIA PowerFLOW to develop and refine the 9X8. Building prototypes and testing them in the wind tunnel usually takes a vast amount of time and resources. Peugeot Sport found the digital approach faster and more cost effective.
“Typically, when you design a race car, there is no compromise between performance and style,” said Olivier Jansonnie, technical director at Peugeot Sport. “It was very clear that developing small-scale physical prototypes and going into the wind tunnel was not the right solution for us. We decided to go for a digital approach that was much more flexible and allowed for broader changes on the car. This was a key driver for partnering with Dassault Systèmes and embracing the latest simulation capabilities of SIMULIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. We needed to speed up our development process and run advanced aerodynamics simulations so we could explore more design options.”
Continuous feedback loop
Because of the seamless connectivity between CATIA and SIMULIA in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the team was able to easily act on simulation results and reflect them back into the design of the car – an approach widely referred to in the industry as MODSIM (modeling and simulation).
“We design with CATIA, generate the surfaces, mesh the model, run the simulation and then bring those results directly back into the design environment,” Jansonnie said. “Within the context of the full structure, we can see which parts are working properly according to the flow. It’s much smoother to exchange ideas.”
Having different design disciplines, such as surface and mechanical design, linked within CATIA supports this iterative process. Working with such high performance materials is a careful balancing act of making sure they’re structurally robust while being as light as possible.
“We’re led by aerodynamics in terms of surface design, and then we have to translate that into feasible mechanical parts, considering their thickness and ability to withstand aerodynamic loads,” said Thomas Orlier, mechanical designer at Peugeot Sport. “Having the entire car represented in a digital model helps us make those informed decisions and be as efficient as possible.”
Everyone involved in the project, including those in the workshop, have the opportunity to view the latest 3D model of the car and give their opinion.
“We want everyone to feel invested in the design of the car, so to be able to consider their ideas and comments is really important,” Le Fur said. “It helps different teams understand how we arrived at certain design decisions and why.”
This continuous engineering loop is also critical for incorporating driver feedback, particularly when it comes to the car’s aerodynamic balance. Engineers must take into account individual driving preferences and find the optimal set up.
“If we have a good balance between the front and rear of the car, it’s much more pleasant to drive,” said Nico Müller, driver at Team Peugeot TotalEnergies. “If we are 2% to 3% too far forward, the car becomes difficult to drive. Too far back and there’s too much understeer. The correlation between the simulations that the engineers use and what we feel on the track is very good. If an engineer says, ‘This is the window where we think the car performs the best,’ that’s the case in reality as well.”
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PEUGEOT is no stranger to Dassault Systèmes solutions. The company is a long-term user of its CATIA design application for the development of all cars across the group. It also has previous experience working with SIMULIA PowerFLOW technology for CFD and SIMULIA Simpack for multibody simulation.
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