Nose cone idea

[Astro1]

I've been reading around, no good source to point, that Ferrari is comming up with a nose cone like this this year. If anyone finds goond information please let us know...

First I would like to say, that the below, is my regurgitation of what I read. I have not read in the actual article. If anybody has it, that would be great.

It was me that hijacked the photos from this site. There was a poster on the autosport forums (quaci c and AFCA in the F2008 thread) seems to come up with uncanny detail about the Ferrari that always seems to come true.

Anyway, he mentioned that Ferrari were working on a design with a hole in the nosecone.

Being a regular visitor here (not poster), I referenced the pics above and his immidiate response was yes that's IT!!!

Take it for what it is...
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According to Autosprint, Ferrari will once again test at Vairano "straight" in a few days.

There, amongst other aerodynamic changes, they will test the new innovative nose, "vented tunnel nose", which was reported to have shown positive results in the wind tunnel.

They have a short interview with Fainello, vehicle performance director, 45 yrs old:

"At the time of the 'tyre war' I was fully concentrated on that. Now, luckily, I can look at a lot of other things. Nowadays, with the absence of a lot of electronic parameters to control, the suspension dyanamics are very important and we have worked very hard in this area and changed a lot of things."

Autosprint asked him about the 'secret' nose

"Well now that it's been talked about...In essence everything that is done [in that regard] is to do with aerodynamic efficiency and balance..."

Nothing more was, stated.

This doesn't mean a total confirmation of the above design, but rumors about it have been circleing for some tome now.

When other Ferrari engeneers and directors have been asked about it by reporters, the question was sidestepped.

There are questions/concerns of my own, that I have about the design. The biggest of those, is how Ferrari will manege to turn the car, with the design effectively hugging a column of air from which the car will not want to diviate. Am I completely off in my thinking?

[manchild]

V1&V2



V1


V2




For those concerned about crash-test and structural stiffness...



V1


V2

[Astro1]

@manchild, that looks amazing!!!!

[manchild]

[modbaraban]

Top marks, manchild.
Carabineri are heading your way (get $100 mil. prepared)

Isn't it the same principle used in some GT cars (like Ford GT40 or the beloved DBR9)? Though cooling remeains the main purpose of these vents.

[manchild]

Top marks, manchild.
Carabineri are heading your way (get $100 mil. prepared)

Isn't it the same principle used in some GT cars (like Ford GT40 or the beloved DBR9)? Though cooling remeains the main purpose of these vents.

Thanks. Vents are one thing. They only look so but when you stuck the radiator in the middle like with vents than you get drag and no downforce as the result of flow beneath and above the element in front of the vents since pressure beneath it is increased instead of being decreased in order to generate downforce. So, similarity is just visual not functional.

[allan]

i think this concept was also used in the ferrari f50... that car had fans in that area though

[nae]

top pictures manchild

[Astro1]

One issue, I have with this for now, "hypothetical" design, is that, it's never been used EVER as an aero element and in cars where it has been used, such as the F-50 etc, LeMans, etc, it's been used pimarily as a cooling device. Radiators or brake ducts are placed in such openings at an angle, and when air passes over the radiator's rough surface, it generates drag.

Now radiators aside, my gut tells me that it would creat more downforce, but at the expence of causing more understeer. However, if it doesn't cause excessive understeer or if the benefit from it is greater, then that of the penelty, the extra frontal downforce, may very well output a car that's very pointy having so much front downforce. Something a driver such as Kimi might love with the absense of traction control.

Hmmm.....can anybody run this idea on a CFD bench?

[Matra]

Bravo manchild!! =D>

[Mikey_s]

Aero is very far from my field, but I read an interesting article in Race car engineering a while back about whether cooling systems could be used to reduce drag, or even increase downforce due to the energy the heat can impart into the 'exhaust'stream.

However, I wonder about the effect on the aero over the top of the car from such a concept. The teams spend so much trying to manage airflow over the car that I can't help feeling that the benefit derived from this might be outweighed by the losses further back...

Any of the aero chaps fancy a shot at it?

[manchild]

From couple of other forums, gathered info:

Idea with this kind of nose cone is not a new. There is almost 30 years when was used first time. Great Collin Chapman used it first time on Lotus 80 to maximize ground effect. He used design something like on your picture, but he used skirts to channel air below nosecone. After first try with front wings and without skirts, he removed wings and used only skirts. Reutemann who drive this car was totally disappointed because car was andrivable over aneven surface because skirts were not movable, and front side lose very easy downforce when skirts do not touch road

[manchild]

So, even than this idea was inspired by possibility that front wings can be run at lower angle or made completely obsolete.

[shawness]

(With apologies to Manchild for the terrible photoshop chop-job on his diagrams.)

Case 1 is a current F1 nose. It generates a surprising amount of downforce as the air traveling under the nose is significantly faster than the air traveling over it. This is the whole reason for a high-nose approach vs a flat-bottom - you get more downforce from an 'aerofoil' nose than you get from a ground effect one if you don't have flexible skirts.

Case 2 is the 'diagonal tunnel' approach. It's correct that the front part of the duct will generate downforce, but unfortunately you have to consider the whole of the duct, and the rear portion forms a classic lift aerofoil. Combined with the disruption around the rear parts of the nose caused by the duct, you end up with more lift than downforce. As the poster above noted, it isn't a new idea in motorsport - I believe it was tried on the Mazda MX-R01 as well and caused a huge loss of front downforce before it was quickly scrapped.

Case 3 is the 'vertical slot' approach. This is the worst case as, if you think about it logically, there is no reason for the air under the car to be the air sucked into the slot. The air on top of the car is at higher pressure than the air underneath, so it'll be the one sucked down and under the car, rather like a less efficient NACA intake. The turbulence at the bottom of the slot will also cause significant issues for the airflow under the nose.

[tomislavp4]

shawness, take a look at this http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p314 ... 8/Nose.jpg (it was posted on the 2nd page on the forum) it clearly shows the airflow