WAK Dynamic

Hi there! I'm Will, a mechanical engineer specialising in performance vehicle aerodynamics. I had always planned to become an engineer but it was only relatively recently, just before I started my undergraduate degree, that I discovered and quickly developed a love for the process of abusing air to enhance race car performance. With a passion for cars and a strange enjoyment found in holding spoons under the kitchen tap to feel the fluid forces, it made sense that I'd eventually combine the two in a meaningful way. It was even more recently that I really narrowed in on the area of greatest interest to me: test equipment, test design, and data correlation. My goal is to have a career working with performance vehicles where I can focus on, contribute, and continue to learn more about the interactions between aerodynamic forces and other vehicle systems, and to use these skills to creatively improve both the correlation and scope of prediction methods.

This site is a collection of my aerodynamic projects, both for me to look back on and to share with others.

I joined our university's Formula SAE team a few months into my second year of uni, after the team had been effectively abandoned over the Covid period. Along with the half-dozen other first and second-year students who joined, we formed the entirety of the team and had the task of fixing the temperamental 2019 electric car that could barely turn a single lap before something failed. At some point towards the end of the year we decided a better idea would be to design and build an entirely new car from scratch in 12 months with no prior knowledge or documentation, with a team of less than 10 individuals and some rather tattered sponsor relationships. Easy, right? No one thought we could do it.

12 months later and with a modest team growth to around 15 members, we had a finished car with a month of track testing already under our belts. It wasn't fast, but it was reliable and competed in all competition events, landing us a top 50% spot in the overall placings, and a 4th place in the cost event that I led and presented. I also had input on design for cooling, ergonomics, and bodywork. Fast forward another 12 months and we finished 4th overall with an evolved version of the car, still with less than 20 members and a budget of AU$35,000. Shows what can be done when every cent and every team member's workload is optimised.

Now that the team is pretty established (which is funny to say after only 2 years), we finally had both an opportunity, and enough general understanding and performance prediction tools to justify looking at aerodynamic elements for the car. We also had enough members at this point (about 25) that we could start having sub-teams for each car system, so I quickly assumed the role of lead aerodynamics engineer and put together a small team to plan out where we wanted to go with performance and design over the next 5 years. The first year of this endeavour (and sadly my final year on the team) is documented in a series of posts under the FSAE tab on this site.

While the FSAE team has been my main focus throughout my undergraduate years, I've also undertaken (and am currently undertaking - see the Concepts and Designs page) several other personal projects.

It started back in high school when I wanted to improve my paper plane designs, so I built my own table-top wind tunnel to test the stability of different designs using some wooden planks and acrylic sheet from the hardware store, and incense for flow visualisation. In my first year of university I took it a step further and designed a very simple (and very inefficient) front and rear wing for a remote control car for an assessment task. I pleaded with the lecturer and workshop manager to let me use the wind tunnel for my project, which normally isn't touched by students outside of 3rd and 4th year lab demonstrations. At first I had my tests run for me, then I was running them under supervision, and eventually I was trusted to control the wind tunnel and run my own tests, which streamlined later projects for other university classes and for the FSAE team.

I started looking for potential honours projects halfway through my third year (in Australia, honours is a year-long research project undertaken in 4th year). Originally I wanted to do something with vehicle aerodynamics, but I also wanted a project that was linked with a local industry to grow my professional network and allow in-person, hands-on experience. There was an opportunity for a project in catamaran hydrodynamics with Incat (a local shipbuilder specialising in large high-speed wave-piercing catamarans) that would involve CFD and utilisation of existing experimental data, and while it wasn't exactly the topic I first had in mind, I figured it was a fantastic opportunity to engage with industry while learning more about fluid dynamics and CFD with expert support. Recognising that I wanted to get the most out of the experience, my supervisor suggested I write a journal paper after completing my thesis. With good progress 6 months in, we decided to abandon the thesis and complete and submit a journal paper prior to the thesis deadline, doubling as my internally assessed work; a first for an engineering honours-level student at the university. Seven months and some revisions later, the article was accepted and published. Naturally I look back on the article and can't help but think of all the things I would do differently now with more experience and knowledge, but it was clearly good enough to be published and I'm still proud of it!

Investigation of CO2 emissions reduction for a 150 m electric catamaran by CFD analysis of various hull configurations

During my honours year I was invited by the STEM manager at a local high school to give a workshop for one of the leading F1 in Schools teams in Australia. We had met at at a local exhibition where we were displaying our FSAE car. Their team had been struggling with maximising competition scores for simulation, validation, and justification. The workshop encompassed a brief explanation of how CFD works (to aid decision making when pre-processing or troubleshooting), general CFD best practises for meshing/mesh verification/domain size, how best to mount and measure the car in their custom small-scale wind tunnel, and how to measure and simulate the compressed air blast behind the car. The team immediately saw improved wind tunnel correlation, and went on to present the winning design/engineering portfolio at the national finals later that year.

As is common in research and complex fields such as engineering, whenever I learn something new I realise more and more how much I still have to learn. I'm therefore always looking for new opportunities to satisfy and fulfil this journey, where I can both learn and apply new skills.

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