Williams FW34 Renault

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Jason: Firstly it's wrong that the exhaust solution is new, they only ran the oval outlets at Melbourne as far as I'm aware. However I do think they perhaps opened up the sidepod exits slightly. Secondly has Gary Anderson been reading my blog? http://somersf1.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/ ... o-top.html almost word for word the comments I wrote just after the race on Monday LOL

'The FW34's side pods end quite abruptly with the exhausts exiting along with the airflow coming through the side pods in order to combine these flows energizing the latter. This allows for a much broader flow to exit toward the rear of the car much further forward than if it were to exit from an engine cover cooling slot.This flow enables the diffuser to work more effectively further forward on the car.'

If you check back over the smoking car of Pastor's from China they ran with the sidepod exits in the same place as the exhaust

As I said to the other poster, it's the first piece they've done on Williams so from launch it is "new". That's what they're getting at. Not that it's the absolute newest, but Williams won the race so they need to do a technical piece and they're describing the changes to the car.

[Huntresa]

I would call the Mclaren style xhaust new which they tested at mugello, this is just what we have seen the last races except in australia.

So why is Gary so behind? He could have atleast done Pre-season-Firstrace-mugellotest-barcelona blog post. I mean we have all see this exhaust every race since australia so saying its new and tweaked sounds like its new coming from bahrain which its not.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

I would call the Mclaren style xhaust new which they tested at mugello, this is just what we have seen the last races except in australia.

So why is Gary so behind? He could have atleast done Pre-season-Firstrace-mugellotest-barcelona blog post. I mean we have all see this exhaust every race since australia so saying its new and tweaked sounds like its new coming from bahrain which its not.

I agree, the McLaren style is new. He's behind and a few other things too.
There is a pre-season analysis done way back, but nothing since then. But I guess since he hasn't done anything on Williams since, he termed the current solution new/tweaked. Sorry wasn't trying to cause any confusion.

[PlatinumZealot]

Jason: Firstly it's wrong that the exhaust solution is new, they only ran the oval outlets at Melbourne as far as I'm aware. However I do think they perhaps opened up the sidepod exits slightly. Secondly has Gary Anderson been reading my blog? http://somersf1.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/ ... o-top.html almost word for word the comments I wrote just after the race on Monday LOL

'The FW34's side pods end quite abruptly with the exhausts exiting along with the airflow coming through the side pods in order to combine these flows energizing the latter. This allows for a much broader flow to exit toward the rear of the car much further forward than if it were to exit from an engine cover cooling slot.This flow enables the diffuser to work more effectively further forward on the car.'

If you check back over the smoking car of Pastor's from China they ran with the sidepod exits in the same place as the exhaust

I don't know about that claim, you have to back it up with more details. Gary clearly did not copy that part of your article.

[Matt Somers]

It was supposed to be taken as tongue in cheek lol, I highly doubt someone like Anderson would need to steal from me. Just strange that we wrote almost the same explanation

[alogoc]

Williams have modified their exhaust to incorporate radiator cooling into the flow at the rear.

[img]http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/2510 ... ex.png[img]
via AutoSport

[img]http://www.formula1.com/wi/sutton/2012/ ... 20.jpg[img]

what the f....!!!!

first he said in Ferrari's case it's a BAD thing to mix fast and slow air and now in Williams is GOOD!?

[Huntresa]

I think we can safely say Gary is just bad this season on his articles...

[beelsebob]

I think we can safely say Gary is just bad this season on his articles...

Or, perhaps we can say he's hit pretty much everything on the nail so far in his predictions of the directions cars should develop in... Instead of just saying "gary's dumb, lets assume we know better", lets try and figure out why it's good for williams and bad for ferrari.

For what it's worth, I don't remember him saying that mixing fast and slow air was bad for ferrari – instead, what he said about their design was that it created a very high side pod surface area, and in doing so created a lot of both lift, and drag. He was pretty accurate in his prediction that the solution would be for them to reduce the size of that big side pod bump and tuck the back together much better.

[alogoc]

I think we can safely say Gary is just bad this season on his articles...

Or, perhaps we can say he's hit pretty much everything on the nail so far in his predictions of the directions cars should develop in... Instead of just saying "gary's dumb, lets assume we know better", lets try and figure out why it's good for williams and bad for ferrari.

For what it's worth, I don't remember him saying that mixing fast and slow air was bad for ferrari – instead, what he said about their design was that it created a very high side pod surface area, and in doing so created a lot of both lift, and drag. He was pretty accurate in his prediction that the solution would be for them to reduce the size of that big side pod bump and tuck the back together much better.

he specifically said you don't want to mix fast and slow air when talking about Ferrari!

[Matt Somers]

Can't really compare the Williams / Ferrari designs as they are inherently different. For starters Ferrari's upright radiator position will effect the speed and flow of the airstream passing through the sidepods and that's why I think they went with the elongated version of this style of sidepod outlet. Ferrari's latest version is a mix of 2 concepts in effect with the exhuast plume now being started outbound rather than inside the sidepod 'Acer' duct. Their sidepod ejector exits just forward of the exhaust plume aim to keep the flow attached and help direct the plume toward the now latter smaller 'Acer' duct.
The FW34's more forward position is also helped by the way the Renault engine excepts the tighter/shorter exhaust design IMO (we also see this style on the RB8) and due to the thermal characteristics of the Renault engine WIlliams have the crab back engine cover allowing lots of rear floor area to accept airflow over it.

[simos]

I don't think Williams new exhaust has anything to do with better aerodynamics or better blown effect. In fact, I believe its quite the opposite, both are weaker than previous solution, but this solution offers much better cooling. They may have simply come to conclusion that they gain more with cooling than with aerodynamics. They can potentially rev the engine more for both qualifying and race.

Actually I think that they completely abandoned the idea of using exhaust gases for aerodynamic effect. The biggest aero advantage Williams has over other cars is their gearbox and slick back, so this new design looks to be all about diverting gases away from coke bottle area.

[godlameroso]

Actually it's a pretty elegant way of strengthening the vortex that flows through the coke bottle shape and subsequently through the top of the diffuser and the beam wing. We all know that Hurricanes build in strength over warm waters, this is because water, when it evaporates carries heat with it, and when this warm water vapor meets cooler air in the atmosphere along with moving air currents, vortecies start to develop because air always follows the path of least resistance; thus hot high pressure air begins interacting with fast moving colder air to reach equilibrium.

It's the same thing that is being exploited by the exhaust with F1 cars. The air around the car is much much colder than the air coming out of the radiator ducts and exhausts. If you can make this air interact in critical areas of bodywork, the strength of the naturally occurring vortex(due to the car moving through the air) will be magnified. Red Bull tried to perfect this the last two years with their EBD and off-throttle maps. The effect is still there, but now instead of the diffuser you have to work with the beam wing plus no off throttle maps to keep the exhaust stream nice and hot. Plus the exhaust stream is further away, Lotus has experience with this due to their forward facing exhaust of last year.

It could be that mixing the exhausts with the radiator exits allows some of the off throttle blowing effect to remain, I don't know, I'm speculating at this point. While I'm speculating, this in combination with the tires could be the reason the performance of cars is more affected by ambient temperature than years past...

[Gridlock]

It could be that mixing the exhausts with the radiator exits allows some of the off throttle blowing effect to remain, I don't know, I'm speculating at this point. While I'm speculating, this in combination with the tires could be the reason the performance of cars is more affected by ambient temperature than years past...

Maybe I need more coffee, maybe this is relevant - could you store the waste thermal energy of cooling and release it when, last year, you'd have been using off-throttle blowing? It would need to be one hell of a collector volume, or a very rapid heat transfer technology, but it would be desirable to have the largest delta between exhaust volume/temp and cooling outflow at corner entry ?

[godlameroso]

I was thinking that maybe the hot air from the cooling systems is helped along by the exhausts, even when the driver goes off the throttle some gas is still going through the exhaust otherwise the engine would shut off. Which is why it gives some cold blowing effect, ie you still have a heat source supplying your vortex even though you don't have an off throttle map for it.

Edit: Since the effect isn't as great as last year, seeing as how the exhausts aren't blowing directly into the center of the vortex, it could be a reason that ambient temperature(in addition to the tyres) affect the performance of the cars so much this year. As soon as there was cloud cover in the Spanish GP the cars gained half a second during qualifying. Perhaps the heat radiating off the asphalt affected the strength of the vortex.

[ivand911]

It is clear they never raced the McL exhaust they tried in Mugello. But ,still their new Spain exhaust is very surprising, they didn't tested it in Mugello I think? But, they bolted it and it is working. I guess McL variant was not successful.