Alonso Fan wrote:Absolutely brilliant for a CAD 'noob'
Interesting 'outwash' design, and I see CAEdevice's concept is being adopted by yet more teams (there's a hint in the plural). Who can blame you though when its an easy route to a df/dr ratio of more than 3?
(not like you had any problem of achieving that with your previous car, but just saying)
I was looking at the different design solutions (waiting for the new rules I decided to study the other cars).
The "closed wheels F1" design (Variante, CAEdevice) is the one with more DF, but not the best about efficiency. The "classic LeMans" design (MantiumRay) is much more efficient, especially in the TF version that uses a special path for the front diffuser flow (Nissan LMP1 like).
JJR used a "modern LeMans" design and an advanced "3D" diffuser and it looks a very good compromise.
My opinion is that, considering the whole challenge, any design can be the winning one and fine tuning will make the difference.
I have not chosen the design of my next car (on the contrary, the "customer" car will likely be an evolution of my 2016 concept) but these factors will have an important role:
1) Tracks (ratio between high df and high efficiency tracks)
2) The possibility that extreme locations of the heat exchangers impact CoG
3) Cooling requirements (espcially Darcy's law paramters)
4) Mesh and solutor settings (especially the way flow separation is managed: last year efficient and low df cars converged easier and faster in less that 1500 iterations).
5) Engine (engines?) Max power