I appreciate this analysis so much!Vanja #66 wrote: ↑13 Sep 2022, 10:31Experience and knowledge leave you with educated guesses, which can be a real benefit actually... Speeds things up quite a lot, adds value and yields good hourly rates. For instance, when I said this
I didn't guess out of my rear, I know which geometries are at play and how those influence floor design in practice. Like this quick floor profile CFD demonstrates:Vanja #66 wrote: ↑09 Sep 2022, 09:25What RB did is very different, they emphasized the curvature around diffuser kink (mandated by rules) and they opened up the diffuser side wall to let the air from the top of the floor enter there to feed and energize the vortex. This makes the floor work more like classical flat-floor with diffuser, as it doesn't rely on ground proximity for optimal performance. Energizing the vortex reduces the pressure in diffuser, which in turn also drives the front of the floor and reduces overall pressure under the floor.
https://i.ibb.co/2dWCbvp/iBwWx4U.jpg
This is just a general outline of their floor philosophy. This is why RB never had any problems with bouncing, but why they also lacked overall downforce compared to Ferrari.
https://i.ibb.co/44dsV89/rb-floor.jpg
RB floor is by far the most complex out there, it uses a lot of additional features to negate the pressure increase that comes with greater tunnel height (not decrease, as you seem to think), including tub profile, vanes, lots of small geometry changes etc. They made a very small throat height and created a strong, but quite small downforce area around it. Only they know how the rest of the floor pressure distribution looks like, especially at the front where all the fun geometry is. Take a look at this thread to see a glimpse of how inconsistent the pressure distribution at the front is:
viewtopic.php?p=879079#p879079
This is very far from what typical ground effect floor pressure distribution looks like and the rear end is practically the same as previous generation diffuser floors. You can be sure that other teams, with conventional ground effect floor design, have a very, very different pressure distribution, far more even as opposed to RB peaky downforce design.
Seeing how strongly this design will be affected by increasing floor throat and edge height in 2023, I can understand why Horner was so much against it. Other than the change playing right to Mercedes' hand...
On top of that, I'd like You to answer a question that I thought of while reading the post: do you believe that this design philosophy by RB is the reason for their outstanding straight-line speed? Maybe the diffuser kink is shaped in a way that allows the diffuser to stall at very high speeds.