Ferrai's movable floor

[kimi]

we saw ferrari come up with some movable floor device at the start of the season at australia,but it was soon banned as it was found illegal.can anyone tell me what exactly is that device n how it helps in increasing the aero balance of the car??

thank you.

[Tom]

We've had a few topics on this at the start of the season, heres what I found.

viewtopic.php?t=4193&highlight=movable+floor
and
viewtopic.php?t=4051

[Ciro Pabón]

Tom is right, as usual. My 4 cents (my posts tend to be long):

A splitter (which is another name for the "movable" floor) is used to split (duh!) the air, and direct it towards the tunnels carved on the floor, tunnels that generate downforce.

In the beginning the thing was made movable to avoid crushing it on the kerbs, or so that's what we're told. Somebody discovered that its movement could be controlled for proper flexibility.

You can make it flexible, so it will produce less drag at high speed and more drag (but more downforce) at low speed, or so I understood. That's, according to FIA, a no-no in Formula One.

The splitter is also (at least "conceptually") part of the ballast of the cars, cars designed to ride as low as possible. So, if you can make it move down when you need it, then you have a second advantage, if slight. I think Renault uses part of its ballast (fixed with screws, as required by regulations) to "enhance" the splitter aerodynamic effect.

Finally, Ferrari has been historically the foreign team in British-German Formula One (if you can say that without being stoned by the mob), which explains a lot of things, if you ask me (don't)...

[kimi]

thanx guys..

[HKS]

.

You can make it flexible, so it will produce less drag at high speed and more drag (but more downforce) at low speed, or so I understood. That's, according to FIA, a no-no in Formula One.

So in the floor is flexible if which position does it reduce the drag at higher ground clearance or or at lower?

[scarbs]

According to Stepneys letter to the FIA, the front floor section was ingeniously sprung. Thus when the nose of the car dived or went over kerbs, the force would raise the floor to protect itself. This was common to virtually all teams, understood and accepted by the FIA.
Ferraris floor would then also do two things, firstly the floor could also droop under aero load at high speed, the closed the gap between the ground and the splitter, this reduced the flow to the diffuser (reducing drag and downforce) and also dragged the bargeboard down. The effect of moving the boards down was they diverted even more flow away from the diffuser further reducing downforce\drag. The diffuser is very efficient and contributes little towards the cars drag. But to balance the car at speed some rear downforce needs to be bled from the car, as otherwise the centre of pressure moves forward putting in front of the Centre of Gravity. This would make the car much more confident to drive in fast turns.
It also seems the rear wing was working in concert with this movement via a clever slot gap separator, this was pointed out to the FIA and they were happy with the wings design…!

The second function of the floor was to act as a mass damper, the weight of the splitter (largely made of tungsten\Densamet) could bounce on its springs to counteract the natural bouncing frequency of the tyres. This was a covert way to recreate the banned mass damper, although I would say the floor with its simpler spring support would not have been as efficient.

[seenathkumar]

Thank you scarbs you have explained very well [...]