Ogami musashi wrote: ↑07 Jun 2013, 02:06
There two conservation principle involved there:
Conservation of mass
Conservation of energy
The complete assembly of undertray+diffuser form a tube of section S1 and S2 respectively.
The quantity of air that enters S1 per second must be the same that exits S2 per sec.
Since we're dealing with particle moving we can also say that the speed at which the quantity flows through S1 must be proportional to the speed that flows through S2 i.e S1V1=S2V2.
Since S2 is larger that S1, V1 is greater than V2 so the speed in the undertray is the greater than in the diffuser.
Now why does the diffuser accelerates the flows in the undertray? This is because the air is slowed down in S2...but the density stays the same (at the speed a car travels); the word "expand" is misleading, the air is not stretching is actually just slows down...and thus a "vacuum" is created and since nature doesn't like it it will be filled...by air coming from the undertray...in other words the diffuser will pump air from the undertray to fill the whole S2 section and the S1V1=S2V2 principle will be verified, only that V1 will be even greater than if the diffuser wasn't there and S2 will be slower.
The peak acceleration at the location where the gradient of section is the greatest, since the difference of section will dictate the speed, the quickest and most abrupt change of section will lead the to steepest change in speed and this is where the diffuser starts.
Now, speed are defined, and they're changing, but energy's not. So basically the three (negating the internal energy of the system) forms of energies (derived from static pressure, height and speed) will varying to conserve the total energy of the system.
If speed increase, either potential energy (from height) or static pressure derived energy will need to compensate.
If we take one particle (in fluids dynamics a particle is not one molecule but a bunch of molecules, that is a small volume of air), its potential energy will not change (the particle will stay at the same height) so only the static pressure will decrease.
The static pressure will decrease and thus hopefully the pressure above the car will be higher thus creating a pressure differential and thus downforce.
Hope this helps.