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SAUBER Petronas C21 rendered by surface pressure
Two exciting new areas of technology advancement are taking place at
Sauber Petronas in Hinwil, Switzerland, this year. A new wind tunnel
facility came on-line in March after years of planning, building, and
testing, and a new supercomputing center will be inaugurated in
December.
Fluent Germany’s Udo Weinmann, left, and Peter Sauber,
right, announce the continuation of the companies’
partnership
The Sauber wind tunnel features the most advanced technology currently
available. When operating under a full load, the specially-mounted
axial fan in the tunnel draws 3 MW of power and delivers wind speeds of
300 km/h. Considering its many features, such as the size of the test section
and models, the dimensions of the “Rolling Road”, the “Model
Motion System” that simulates suspension and control of the vehicle, and
cutting-edge data acquisition technology, the Sauber facility compares
favorably with the existing Formula 1 wind tunnels.
A test model in Sauber’s new wind tunnel
Shortly after the new wind tunnel was commissioned, the Swiss company
Dalco, a provider of optimized parallel computing systems throughout
Europe, delivered a supercomputing system for Sauber Petronas’
demanding computational needs. Following an exhaustive review of the
technology options currently available, a Linux cluster architecture using
AMD Opteron processors was chosen. With 530 processors, the high-performance
computing system is one of the most capable of its kind in both
the Formula 1 and automotive industries. It will enable the Swiss F1 team
to perform complex computing tasks using FLUENT at much higher speed
than ever before.
Amid these developments, Sauber Petronas and Fluent signed an agreement
that extends their cooperation in the area of CFD until the end of
2006. Commenting on the extension of the technical partnership, Team
Principal Peter Sauber said, “Aerodynamics has become an increasingly
critical factor in recent years. This has made CFD simulation consistently
more important as well. Fluent is a highly competent partner for us, making
a major contribution to our ability to work in this field successfully.”
Torbjörn Larsson, Head of CFD at Sauber, regards the partnership with
Fluent as an important basis for the team’s aerodynamic developments.
“The computational efficiency and accuracy of the Fluent software, combined
with its functionality and flexibility, have allowed us to efficiently
integrate CFD into the aerodynamic development process. The extension
of our technical partnership with Fluent ensures that we use state-of-the-art
fluid mechanics simulations,” he said.
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