Fluxiss Service Spotlight: Motorsport Engineering from Vehicle Dynamics to Aero, Thermal and NVH

This service spotlight explains how the Fluxiss Motorsport Engineering service helps race teams, private builders and performance-car OEMs find speed, grip and reliability before a car reaches the track. Track days are expensive and every change made in the garage costs time; a virtual test costs far less. Fluxiss supports teams in Germany, the UK, the USA and the UAE, and the work joins four threads: ride and handling, aerodynamics, thermal management and structural safety, with NVH where a road-going performance car also has to feel refined.

Ride and handling starts with the suspension. Fluxiss runs suspension kinematics analysis so the wheels keep the right camber and toe through bump, roll and steer, and K&C suspension analysis to understand how real bushes and links comply under load. For single-seaters and prototypes, pushrod and pullrod layouts are analysed for motion ratio and stiffness, and chassis stiffness is tuned so the suspension, not the frame, does the work. Tyre modelling and lap time simulation then show how a setup change trades corner speed against straight-line speed.

“How the Fluxiss Motorsport Engineering service helps race teams and performance OEMs find lap time virtually: suspension kinematics and K&C, motorsport CFD for downforce and drag, brake and radiator cooling, monocoque and roll-structure FEA, and NVH for road-going performance cars.”

Aerodynamics is where much of the free lap time sits. Under Aerodynamic Performance and Computational Fluid Dynamics, the team studies wings, underbody and diffuser flow, aerodynamic balance and centre of pressure, and drag reduction, so the car stays stable at high speed and the downforce is spent where it helps. Thermal Management and Heat Transfer covers brake cooling CFD, radiator and engine cooling, and battery thermal management for electric race and road cars, because one overheated corner or cell can end a race long before the tyres do.

Structure and safety are not optional. Finite Element Analysis is used for monocoque and composite structure checks, extreme-load cases and lightweight chassis design, and for road-car programmes exported to the US the roof and rollover work references FMVSS 216a. NVH analysis, using modal analysis to find resonances and vibration isolation to control them, keeps a fast road car from becoming a loud one. Rulebook questions under FIA or national series regulations are treated as part of the design brief, not an afterthought.

Motorsport work connects to the wider vehicle programme described in the automotive engineering spotlight, covering crash, durability, NVH and EV thermal management, and the CFD spotlight explains how flow models are set up and checked. Engineers who like to run their own numbers can use the Race Car Dynamics Master Workbook from the products store alongside the simulation work, and the Automotive Motorsport Engineering page lists the full scope, including digital twin lap simulation and Hardware-in-the-Loop and Software-in-the-Loop validation.

A useful motorsport enquiry includes the series and regulations the car runs under, CAD of the chassis, suspension and bodywork, current setup sheets and any logged track data, tyre information, the target such as lap time, balance, cooling margin or weight, and the deadline before the next event. Teams can contact Fluxiss with that information or schedule a technical meeting to agree the simulation plan, correlation approach and deliverables before work begins.