hardingfv32 wrote:Vonk
Maybe it would be easier to dispel what YOU think is going on in this area of the car.
So, I assume that you AGREE that there is down-force being generated by this system most of us are calling a diffuser. What is your explanation for how the down-force is being generated.
Your first post mentioned flow above the diffuser. Is this your main theory?
Brian
Brian,
I agree that the apparent
purpose of the diffuser was to add down-force. I wonder whether more-than-deserved credit was given to the diffuser when it first appeared, because the car it came on was so much faster than the others. When the others put on diffusers they still couldn’t catch up. But it appeared to be of benefit, even operating under such adverse conditions. I’m sure that its optimization became an expensive black art of cut and try.
You can see from my original posts that I am looking for other benefits form the diffuser such as upward deflection of body slip stream. That slip stream traverses a lot of turbulence-creating suspension components, and maybe, just maybe, its upward deflection can clean that up a bit, besides adding some down force. Could the diffuser assist in other wake management, etc, etc, etc?
As you can see, I have no main theory. But I believe that we should not be misled by the many standard explanations in the interested community, based on simplistic application of closed system flow theory to the complex conditions of an open system race car. – End of speech.