Raptor22 wrote:We're seeing the effect of a car not running rear springs. The rear suspension is much more supple than the fronts so the cars tend to roll on their rear axles, cocking the inside front wheel and the inside front wing span.
And then throw in a bit of flexy-wing and that's the full story!
yeah but how much flexiwing?
Its hard to tell the wing is actually flexing from those pics since we don;t know the speed and how much force is on them at that speed.
Raptor22 wrote:errm, I don;t think so. the difference is very very small this is not like a rudder its like doing a flat turn in a Zivko Edge 540. the outside wing does have a more airflow and is partly the reason why the plane will wnat to dip its inside wing (in a F1 car lift the inside wing), but its also the application of rudder that creates an imblanced force with a slight vertical componentthat pushes the inside wing down.
Its not the same scenario and the span on an F1 wing is much much less.
We're seeing the effect of a car not running rear springs. The rear suspension is much more supple than the fronts so the cars tend to roll on their rear axles, cocking the inside front wheel and the inside front wing span.
Then maybe this inside wing span stalls, going out of ground effect due to suspension geometry ? Resulting momentum (stalled vs working wing) will be probably enough to flex/pivot FW. Not sure if it will be of any use.
maybe not stalled but certainly less efficient. Not sure we would want that though since violent changes in downforce levels from the front wing creates a knock on effect downstream which would manifest itself as pitch sensitivity.
Raptor22 wrote:maybe not stalled but certainly less efficient. Not sure we would want that though since violent changes in downforce levels from the front wing creates a knock on effect downstream which would manifest itself as pitch sensitivity.
I know i'm a little desperate with this, but just looking for some magic in how this FW works. It doesn't look extraordinary, but it has to generate more downforce then any other car's FW, to compensate for this supposedly much bigger downforce generated at the rear. And in the corners even more so.
Front wings are works of art. They shape airflow downstream and around the car while delivering downforce., I am sure there are effects that you mention but its just hard to nail down what exactly would be going on without some CFD or a windtunnel.
Basically, the front wing creates downforce more like a diffuser than an airplane wing.
There is two main components in the downforce. The first one is the simple conservation of momentum. The shape of the wing pushes the air up. Action-Reaction: the air pushes the wing down -> downforce. This bit, though is mostly limited by the dimensions of the wing, which are set in the rules. So it's pretty much the same for all of the cars. Hard to gain an advantage here.
The second one is something analog to the Venturi effect. The shape of the underside of the wing works like the rear diffuser. A certain amount of air "has" to exit the back of the underside of the wing to catch up with the surrounding flow of air. But this air has to come from somewhere: under the wing.
So basically, we assume that along the length of the wing, the same volume of air per second has to flow.
Since the wing is lower at the front than at the back, it has much less space to flow. In order to maintain the debit of air under the wing, the flow has to go quicker. Hence, where the wing is lower, the flow goes quicker. And that extra speed causes a loss of pressure known as the Bernoulli effect.
Normal pressure over the wing and less pressure under the wing = downforce!
Now imagine that the wing is lowered. That is even less space for the air to travel under the front of the wing -> more speed of air under the front of the wing -> more loss of pressure -> more downforce.
So if the wing bends and therefore is lower, it creates more downforce.
Now if this happens globally, it can also happen locally.
In a bend, if the wing bends more on the outside of the turn, it will be lower on the outside, and create more downforce there, hence creating more force on the front outside tyre, and therefore more grip on that tyre, leading to a better turn in and higher cornering speed.
true, very generally spot on, but the effect is geometrically proportional to speed of the airflow, so at a certain speed the effect is much less pronounced than at say 30km/hr higher (thats just an example).
Hence its difficult to make a blanket statement that that is what is happening without understanding the conditions of cornering speed, air speed and wing data (chord, A0A, pressure data for the foil etc)
@bot6:
Yeah, agree.
BTW the basic principle of lift generation of airplane wing, or any other airfoil, is roughly the same - changing direction of flow and lift/downforce as force to react the change of momentum of fluid mass.
Maybe this venturi effect from lowering (read wing flexing + suspension design/setup) FW is the key to understand what differentiates RB's form other teams.
Maybe it's just the shape of the wing (don't think so myself).
And maybe it's not that hard to make god front wing, any team with good CFD and wind tunnel can do this, and the real limitation to the performance is how the rear of the car works.
The truth is, looking at barcelona's timeshits and comments, that in recent 2-3 years all those high paid aero profis from other big teams are looking at it, and can't find the answer.
I predict > 1s between RB's and the next ones come Melbourne.
I am sure that one of the other esteemed members of this forum has stated this already, but surely a factor in the tilt seen in the above image, and indeed the one from 2010 testing with the cable rig is the fact that the "outside" edge of a wing is not only subject to increased loading due to roll (ok, only a bit but still some) but also the air on that side of the car is passing faster over the wing than on the inside.
Anyone who's tried to drive round a corner with a locked diff will have experienced the same thing, only it's in air rather than in contact with the road.
Scribe a circle of radius X, then another circle of radius X+Y (where Y in this case is the width of the FW) and you will find that the latter circle has a greater circumference than the former.
What I'm saying in summary is that the outside of a front wing is travelling through a greater distance tha the inside, hence it produces more downforce, and if it's flexible it will bend more.
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forty-two wrote:I am sure that one of the other esteemed members of this forum has stated this already, but surely a factor in the tilt seen in the above image, and indeed the one from 2010 testing with the cable rig is the fact that the "outside" edge of a wing is not only subject to increased loading due to roll (ok, only a bit but still some) but also the air on that side of the car is passing faster over the wing than on the inside.
Anyone who's tried to drive round a corner with a locked diff will have experienced the same thing, only it's in air rather than in contact with the road.
Scribe a circle of radius X, then another circle of radius X+Y (where Y in this case is the width of the FW) and you will find that the latter circle has a greater circumference than the former.
What I'm saying in summary is that the outside of a front wing is travelling through a greater distance tha the inside, hence it produces more downforce, and if it's flexible it will bend more.
I was the one who stated it before, but i was actualy wrong, i'm afraid.
Did quick math, and for a corner with 100m radius, assuming centres of pressure are 1,5m apart, speed difference is a mere 1,5%. Not enough IMHO.
I would imagine that the true figure would also be influenced by:
- How flexible each half of the FW is under what load (note that this could in theory be a circular factor, as the greater the flexing, the closer the wing is to the ground, and the greater the downforce, and the greater the flexing and so on and so on).
- Whether or not the wing as a whole is able to rotate about the nosecone. This has actually been witnessed on Red Bull cars for a number of seasons, but was perhaps most evident just prior to Vettel T-Boning Button last year.
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I remember a very strange accident that happened to Coulthard in Monaco GP 2007 ( or something similar).
He crashed into some one at the chicane out of the tunnel,ther were pictures of his front wing in an oblique position but after that he managed to finish the race without changing the nose.
