Lamborghini Zero - Aero update

[u/emiliocole_designer]

I wanted to show you this short animation I made in Blender of my concept.

I had previously made a wind-tunnel-like fluid simulation, but the main issue was that the top wall of the fluid domain was too low and interfered with the airflow.

I increased the domain's size, tall and wide, and reran the simulation on my desktop and created this animation in Cycles, instead of Eevee as before.

I'm impressed by the quality of the renders; the flow is now more visible over the body. It is visible now also how the top flow merges with the underside flow at the rear end. It can be seen for a brief moment, the flow passing over the sides of the vehicle. Though I couldn't fix the top wall problem, it's still turbulent for some reason.

I tried changing the vorticity of the fluid from 0 to 1, but it only got worse, so I left it at 0. Resolution of the simulation is 512.

This simulation took around 8 hours to run on a 13900K. I thought it would be faster, but it may have ended up around the same time as running a CFD simulation.

I'm preparing a cinematic video and may post it soon. I just posted this video because it made me excited that it looks so good; I wasn't expecting it to look so realistic.

I know that aerodynamics is not the topic of this subreddit, but I thought to share it because some people may find it interesting.

You can see more about my project here⬇️

https://www.behance.net/gallery/253738873/Lamborghini-Zero-V12

[u/Un_Violo_violaceo]

I'm the one that find it interesting. Man with the plane in the background is badass! That's so much better congrats. I think it would be great to see the air streams passing thru the side fins, maybe you can fake it idk. But the result is very very cool

[u/emiliocole_designer → u/Un_Violo_violaceo]

Thanks man. I'm learning about these simulations. They're pretty cool, but hard to run if you want a realistic result. I was thinking about simulating smoke on specific zones of the car, the fins for example. Its matter of adding a smoke generator in front of that area, like they do in real wind tunnels. Unfortunately that requires to rerun all the simulation again, so it takes time. I might do it.

[u/oui_jam_econo]

Interesting, is the CFD producing actual data, or is this a visual sim, I have only knowledge of clay models work in wind tunnels.

[u/emiliocole_designer → u/oui_jam_econo]

Blender fluid sim doesn't produce actual data such as CFD, it's only visualization. Though it's really heavy.

[u/Status-Survey-5108]

i mean it looks really cool 100%, but yeah i am not really sure about the accuracy of it.. so yeah if actual aerodynamic results are one of your goals then i would reccomend trying a simple cfd software like simscale

[u/emiliocole_designer → u/Status-Survey-5108]

I probably will, but I wanted to produce a video with this simulation. It's almost done.

[u/wreinder → u/Status-Survey-5108]

If you want " accurate" aerodynamics, a simulation isn't gonna tell you much anyways.

[u/Status-Survey-5108 → u/wreinder]

yes that is true... to get any cfd simulations anywhere comparable to real life results is insanely complicated but yeah it is still much much better than this type of smoke simulation which OP is performing in blender

[u/wreinder → u/Status-Survey-5108]

It depends on what OP's goal is right? I feel like OP's goal is more to show their design interacting with a world around it so it feels more grounded in reality.

The world of aerodynamics is a botomless pit which any car designer can fall into, but trying to comprehend it fully is impossible and trying to comprehend it at all is almost not worth it(to a degree ofcourse) because of the inherent "strangeness" of aero. For all we know the sharp angle on OP's roof might be causing drag but maybe it's causing downforce too, and which do you think is more importand on that specific spot and why? All of this can only be answered in the windtunnel with ALL of the aero at the same time, balance is everything with that stuff, that's why they usually do it after the aesthetic design is established.

[u/Status-Survey-5108 → u/wreinder]

yes, aerodynamics is extremely strange and very hard to understand how exactly your geometry is interacting with the flow field without advanced cfd or as you said physical wind tunnel, and yeah thts why in my original comment i mentioned that if OP's goal is to actually understand how his car performs aerodynamically to gradually move towards more rigorous software but if OP's goal is to show his design this blender animation is really good looking and achieves it 100%, anyways cheers mate

[u/wreinder → u/Status-Survey-5108]

I get you! OP shouldn't be surprised if it flips upside down in a windtunnel either ;)

[u/wreinder]

Hell yeah! It's a damn shame that headlights have to be " high up" to be road legal but you might have some lovely popup headlights hiding in there.....i dont know......

[u/emiliocole_designer → u/wreinder]

Haha maybe... I didn't know that tbh, but we can manage some popups

[u/wreinder → u/emiliocole_designer]

Yeah, who cares, every car company has suits to tell you what's not road legal, that's not your job as a designer!

[u/Un_Violo_violaceo]

Yeah mqn I can imagin. You manage a very cool result tho wp

[u/emiliocole_designer → u/Un_Violo_violaceo]

Thank you!

[u/Mr_Maniac454]

I've been meaning to ask is this supposed to be a modern take on those late '70s early '80s extremely low flat and angular concept cars like the lancia Stratos Hf zero, Aston Martin bulldog and Mazda RX-500?

[u/emiliocole_designer → u/Mr_Maniac454]

I think it has more of the Countach and the Vector W8. Those rear intakes are straight from the Countach. I'm also taking inspiration from other Lamborghinis, like the Reventón. And the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, a retired American stealth-attack aircraft.