CFD Amnesty

[monkeymax]

Hi All,
Long time reader, but haven't signed up till now (sorry - don't know why!).
I have a question about a recent piece of news, specifically this:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/120520
"FIA's Whiting offers 'CFD amnesty' to finetune 2017 Formula 1 rules"

I find this really interesting that he's offering an amnesty but am confused as to what this means? Does it mean they can develop ideas for their 2017 cars without adding to their CFD counts until the end of the amnesty? Or does it mean that they're allowed to use as much CFD for even the current cars as they would like? (which seems daft to me!)

Thanks,
Max

[n_anirudh]

Thanks for asking this, I would have, if you hadnt

I believe they will increase the CFD restriction from 30 teraflops to more and also allow slightly more wind tunnel time. F1 2017 is being projected as the current F1 on steroids.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/111847

Windtunnel time is defined as the amount of hours the fans are turned on above a certain speed, also known as wind-on time. CFD usage is the amount of teraflops used in processing a model.

The wind-on time used for this formula is the average wind-on hours per week, while CFD processing is the total for the full eight week period.

Each measure (wind-on time/teraflop) is used as a single unit and the cap sits at 30 units in the testing period.

So a team could use up to 30 hours per week of wind-on time and no CFD processing, or 30 teraflop of CFD and no windtunnel or a combination of both.

Under the RRA, usage was set at 60 hours or 40 teraflop. Now it's 30 hours or 30 teraflop, so the new rules allow for far less testing.

I expect some more hiring in the aero department soon

[MadMatt]

Holy smoke have I missed something? 6-7s a lap faster? Is that the first time in F1 History the FIA has decided to make the cars faster? Damn if that is really happening I can't wait. Maybe I can finally get back the F1 passion I had lost since circa. 2006!

[Cold Fussion]

Flops is a rate measurement so what do they mean when they say 30 terraflops a week? Is is a continuous 30 terraflops per week?

[Moose]

Flops is a rate measurement so what do they mean when they say 30 terraflops a week? Is is a continuous 30 terraflops per week?

Clearly it means that they get to add 30tflops to their compute cluster every week

[Jersey Tom]

Apologies for being off-topic, but...

The cars are likely to possess wider front and rear wings and tyres, with measurements for the latter now confirmed at 425mm for the rear and 325mm for the front, an increase of 100mm and 80mm respectively.

That's massive

[godlameroso]

3.15" and 4" wider tires, there's gonna be some crazy offsets.

[riff_raff]

Don't see how the proposed "amnesty" will reduce costs. All it will do is encourage teams to spend money developing more efficient CFD processing tools and wind tunnel test procedures. These are things the teams with less financial resources can afford to pursue.

[MadMatt]

Don't see how the proposed "amnesty" will reduce costs. All it will do is encourage teams to spend money developing more efficient CFD processing tools and wind tunnel test procedures. These are things the teams with less financial resources can afford to pursue.

Haha, don't you think teams are not already spending money anywhere? If you forbid working in CFD they will invest in FEA. If you "ban" FEA they will invest in experimental tests. If you ban tests, they will invest in dynamic rigs and simulators. Doesn't matter if they allow the teams to do CFD, for sure the smaller teams with no computer cluster will struggle but are they much better now?

[Cold Fussion]

30 Tflops is a very small amount of computing power in today's world, you could probably get a 30 tflops cluster for less than 50k USD (especially with GPU acceleration like in the latest versions of ANSYS Fluent). Such a small amount of computing power probably isn't worth owning yourself and probably a lot more economical to rent it from someone like Amazon.

[riff_raff]

Haha, don't you think teams are not already spending money anywhere? If you forbid working in CFD they will invest in FEA. If you "ban" FEA they will invest in experimental tests. If you ban tests, they will invest in dynamic rigs and simulators. Doesn't matter if they allow the teams to do CFD, for sure the smaller teams with no computer cluster will struggle but are they much better now?

Optimizing a design using CFD is an iterative process. And the better your model is at the start of the CFD analysis process, the less time/effort it will require to produce a satisfactory result. If the amount of computing power allowed for CFD is limited, the teams that have more experienced (ie. more highly paid) analysts who can produce a satisfactory result from CFD modelling with less effort will be ahead of other teams. Less money will be spent on computer time for CFD, but more money will be spent on salaries for better analysts and software engineers capable of creating more efficient CFD applications.

The smaller teams must still produce their own chassis, which requires a substantial amount of aero work.

[gixxer_drew]

30 Tflops is a very small amount of computing power in today's world, you could probably get a 30 tflops cluster for less than 50k USD (especially with GPU acceleration like in the latest versions of ANSYS Fluent). Such a small amount of computing power probably isn't worth owning yourself and probably a lot more economical to rent it from someone like Amazon.

I think you would have a hard time getting the GPU stuff in Fluent to make a meaningful impact on a simulation like that. I keep holding my breath for them to really get that done. It seems like especially if you are limited by "tflops" the GPU stuff is either not working at all yet for larger simulations or not even close to what the capabilities of the GPU should be in terms of TFlops... time will tell I guess. I am going to assume F1 teams get pre-release code and custom solvers... but when I talk to the software guys they say the hardware cant really do it all just yet and the hardware guys say the software guys are just not leveraging the hardware yet.