Importance of the diffuser?

[Gecko]

That is not entirely correct. Around any kink, the inviscid flow will be accelerated before and also after the kink.

And the physical mechanism for that would be...?

(its an expanding duct here)

It's just the potential flow of an ideal fluid around a kink/large curvature (a solution of the Laplace equation for the velocity potential). E.g. this picture, where the flow is along the dark blue lines and the magnitude of the velocity is given by the inverse distance between the bright blue lines. It's not exactly the situation as in the diffuser but the principle still stands; the flow near the kink is somewhat accelerated both before and after the kink, and this is the phenomenon can also be observed in the CFD flow pictures earlier in this thread where the floor transitions into the diffuser.

[guy]

Hi all!!
Somebody Can gives me the different values of overall downforce in Formula 1 from 80's to present days?

Thanks, and sorry for my bad English.

[rob]

Hi all!!
Somebody Can gives me the different values of overall downforce in Formula 1 from 80's to present days?

Thanks, and sorry for my bad English.

Here is plot of downfore and engine power from year 1965 to 2000.

http://img444.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img3200pi4.jpg

I hope it help you.

[guy]

Thanks a lot!!!

[delsando]

http://delsando.deviantart.com/art/Poss ... -120633498

Wanted to whether this was legal/illegal .?

[kilcoo316]

It's just the potential flow of an ideal fluid around a kink/large curvature

Thank you!


Constant learning (and re-learning what I really shouldn't forget ) on here!

[kilcoo316]

A dissapointing aspect of Bahrain was the lack of improvement of Force India.

I personally expected them to jump far ahead of Ferrari/BMW/STR...

[xpensive]

What I think is happening at this moment, but obviously cannot see, is a ferocious race by the engineers of the grandees to design the ultimate interpretation of the new diffuser rules, all in order to have it in place for Barcelona.

As an engineer, I cannot wait to see what Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, RBR and Renault will come up with in three weeks.

In Ferrari's case, I expect a new car basically?

[NormanBates]

A dissapointing aspect of Bahrain was the lack of improvement of Force India.

I personally expected them to jump far ahead of Ferrari/BMW/STR...

that surprised me too

I was betting (non-literally) on the top 3 teams from last year (Ferrari+BMW+McLaren) doing horribly bad in Q1 and taking at least four of the last five positions in the grid

I guess FI confirms that sticking a DDD on a car won't necessarily help much

What I think is happening at this moment, but obviously cannot see, is a ferocious race by the engineers of the grandees to design the ultimate interpretation of the new diffuser rules, all in order to have it in place for Barcelona.

I don't think so; actually, I think they should be more than happy if they could just copy the design from brawn/toyota/williams and get it working on their cars; they seem so far away from that that thinking about the "ultimate" anything seems just too optimistic (of course, now that I posted this, they will all come to barcelona with the best triple-letter thing since XXX, just to make me look stupid, but anyway...)

[timbo]

A dissapointing aspect of Bahrain was the lack of improvement of Force India.

I personally expected them to jump far ahead of Ferrari/BMW/STR...

Look at BMW. This should be your point of reference.
FI improved, so did others, except BMW.

[kilcoo316]

Look at BMW. This should be your point of reference.
FI improved, so did others, except BMW.

Ferrari...

STR...



BMW were crap in China. There was little relative change between them and FI at Bahrain - even though FI had no DDD in China.

[timbo]

Ferrari...

STR...



BMW were crap in China. There was little relative change between them and FI at Bahrain - even though FI had no DDD in China.

Ferrari did some tweaks before China, so they didn't slip too far back. STR were updated to RBR Australia-Malaysia config.
In China Heidfeld managed 11 in quali.
I think FI improved as much as Renault compared to their Australia specs.

[xpensive]

For Norman;
While obviously not having a clue what you do for a living, what the engineer involved should be trained to do, is to keep an open mind to novelties such as the Brawn diffuser and try to understand it to the best of his abilities.

Then the active part, to use whatever resources at hand to capitalize on said novelty. If possible invent something even better, second best is to reverse-engineer and improve, when the last resort being a sheer copy-cat job.

Above is the perfect-world, in a design-office such as my own however, first hurdle is the "not invented by me" reaction.

[NormanBates]

hi xpensive

it's pretty obvious I'm not an engineer

I understand that the ultimate goal is to have something better than the others have, but the engineers in F1 are facing pretty tight time constraints: if it can take you 3 months to invent the ultimate difusser, you'd better make a copy of someone else's design, and have it working, in a couple of weeks, maybe even a month, then start working on that much better design, for which some of the work will be already done, plus you'll understand better the advantages and disadvantages of your competitor's design

that's what I'd try to do, anyway (knowing the overoptimism and overconfidence problems that I share with most of humanity, I also know there would be a fat chance that I'd try to go straight for the better design, if I felt I had a chance of getting it working soon... but it's a very risky strategy in any case)

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, everybody that thinks "Is that possible?" is an engineer to me.