Aerodynamics
The aerodynamic package is a result of well over 100(and counting...) CFD runs in a virtual wind tunnel. We have our own mini-supercomputer capable of meshing and solving cases with up to 30 million cells. The evolution of the shape of the car happened while evaluating different changes in all areas of the car, constantly evolving where we went with the design in a sort of closed-lo
op method. The major advantage to running our own CFD program is that we could evaluate recent runs and quickly start running new designs literally overnight. This is all simulated "air" of course so it is taken with a grain of salt, but having said that, the correlation between our CFD and the actual car data has been very good. Design
Every part of the car was designed in great detail to be as light as possible while maintaining the strength and stiffness required of each part. We did this with CAD and FEA tools on some parts and by simple hand calculations on others. We invested much effort in the design to help ensure the "right" parts fail when they should fail, in the case of an accident, reducing the impact on the connecting parts you would rather not replace.
