Delta wing car concept

[Scania]

Everybody here is worried about the car understeering, but in Racecar Engineering, a vehicle dynamics engineer(don't remember the name) was more worried about the fact that VIRTUALLY all of the roll resistance having to come from the rear, and the oversteer that could result. An oversteer tendency could be quite sketchy in a car with a rear weight dist. of 72.5%. That's a whole lot of rear mass to conrol in a car that might already have an oversteering tendency.

The test driver mentioned that the car oversteered during the run.

Cant wait for their run on 17 March

open test?

[Jersey Tom]

fair enough.... and I do agree the Delta shape does have its place; on the right track (with a lack of corners) I agree it has more potential than a rectangular car....

[thisisatest]

since the real problem is during combined braking/turning and not in steady state turning, the delta wing car may be fine for ovals?... until there is need for evasive maneuvers, of course

[Jersey Tom]

I think there's just as much issue in pure cornering as anything else. With the layout of the thing you're just automatically locked into such a diabolical rearward load transfer distribution.

[Pierce89]

I think there's just as much issue in pure cornering as anything else. With the layout of the thing you're just automatically locked into such a diabolical rearward load transfer distribution.

Yeah, regardless of other dynamics that rear end will always have a heaping helping of inertia to sort out.

[FW17]

Everybody here is worried about the car understeering, but in Racecar Engineering, a vehicle dynamics engineer(don't remember the name) was more worried about the fact that VIRTUALLY all of the roll resistance having to come from the rear, and the oversteer that could result. An oversteer tendency could be quite sketchy in a car with a rear weight dist. of 72.5%. That's a whole lot of rear mass to conrol in a car that might already have an oversteering tendency.

The test driver mentioned that the car oversteered during the run.

Cant wait for their run on 17 March

open test?

They are doing a public demo run before the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring ALMS race

[Scania]

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/race/ ... irst-test/
what I had talk:they could lock-up the rear brakes without any trouble.

[Scania]

Highcroft. site was close & reopen on 13th
& their truck was go to Sebring

[Scania]

I think it is possible to see that they will say "ah.....we will race in this weekend." tomorrow.

[cossie]

Highcroft. site was close & reopen on 13th
& their truck was go to Sebring

getting interested on Bowlbey's design, and seeing if it comes to fruition

[Scania]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... wlQAvEfmeI
In car video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... lLZ3d-X8aY
Nissan DeltaWing - Nissan Reveal 13th March 2012 - Innovation that Excites

[donskar]

The posters in this thread seem generally negative about this design. Are any of you influenced to change your mind now that Nissan has joined Michelin as a supplier? (Serious question.) I just have a feeling that Nissan and Michelin (especially) would be hesitant about being associated with a well-publicized failure. Am I missing something?

[Jersey Tom]

The posters in this thread seem generally negative about this design. Are any of you influenced to change your mind now that Nissan has joined Michelin as a supplier? (Serious question.) I just have a feeling that Nissan and Michelin (especially) would be hesitant about being associated with a well-publicized failure. Am I missing something?

I'd say that some of the posters in this thread seem they have zombie-like belief in all the claims made by the designers... and refuse to even consider that there may be fundamental issues on the premise of basic vehicle dynamics.

Anyway, Nissan and Michelin don't change my opinion at all. Facts are facts. Is the car going to be a "failure?" No. Failure is subjective to assessment and regardless of anything, the project is going to be spun the way the way they want it to. It's all a big marketing & political game - as is much of racing in general. Hell even the drivers aren't going to tell you what they really think of things and piss off their team or sponsors. Those type of things are reserved for internal discussion, and the public gets read a well-tailored press release.

Fact is, in many ways they've painted themselves into a small box with the absurdly rear-biased lateral load transfer distribution baked into the thing from the track width difference. Can you throw band aids on it or crutch it up to make it work? Sure. But why go through the extra effort when there's a simpler solution?

[machin]

The posters in this thread seem generally negative about this design. Are any of you influenced to change your mind now that Nissan has joined Michelin as a supplier? (Serious question.) I just have a feeling that Nissan and Michelin (especially) would be hesitant about being associated with a well-publicized failure. Am I missing something?

I see the Delta-wing project as a great opportunity for Nissan and Michelin... they get to race at Le Mans, and they get to do that racing with a completely different set of rules which allows them to run at a relatively high pace (3:45's was mentioned when I last checked...?) compared to the competitors running to the "normal" rules... I don't think it'll be a failure... Why wouldn't a big manufacturer want to get involved given situation?

However... My belief, based on fundamentals (and historical evidance) is that a rectangular layout, running to the same basic rules (same power, allowed to use ground effects, and devoid of weight restrictions) would be quicker...

If the ACO are keen to promote high efficiency racing they should open up the rules to anybody... and have a class with a 300bhp limit, no minimum weight, allow ground effects. Let the Deltawing fight it out on equal terms with other cars... then we'll see if the (in my opinion) slight weight advantage and aerodynamics of the Deltawing really are better than a slightly heavier car running a "rectangular" wheel layout and a "conventional" mass balance.

In my opinion what the ACO shouldn't do (shuldn't have done!) is let one car run to a different set of rules... its simply not fair.

However... the ACO have a habit of doing this.. we only need to look back at when Diesels were introduced -The ACO skewed the regs at the beginning of the century to promote diesel power... the Diesels were allowed more power and yet ran to the same weight as the petrol engined cars. in reality, given no rules the petrol cars could be made lighter for the same power output, and would have been quicker given equal funding.... (Whether they won or not is a different question -it would've been interesting to see how the fuel consumption war had worked out....)

[Scania]

I think better rules is there are 2 rules on LMP1: 1 is current rule, another is 450kg weight limited, 1.6T Driect injet 4 cyl engine with air resitor to limt <300-350hp, no wing or areo parts allowed but big ground effect. but It will easy to fly away with a rectangular ground effect car & unstable on the curb.