2017-2020 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[mzso]

Currently let us assume your front wing generates 300 kg of down force, the rear generates 600 kg of down force

You lock down the figures, and allow for a front diffuser size that would generate 450 kg of down force by lowering it and removing the neutral section and a rear diffuser and wing that would generate 900 by increasing size of the diffuser

All teams would be able to achieve the desired down force and teams can then focus their efforts to reduce the drag that would give them an advantage in the straights while all cars will theoretically be able to corner in a similar manner.

Allowing something doesn't prevent something else. I don't see this preventing any of the things I described. Besides those wortex generator horrors actually decrease drag by guiding air around the wheels.

[trinidefender]

Until F1 loses its predilection for extreme aero rules and development just keep rearranging those deck-chairs on the sinking ship.

There are vastly more areas that are much more relevant to road car development than aero such as active suspension, energy recuperation and tyre technology.

The best aero regulations F1 could come up with is the best possible aerodynamic shape for a following car, next to no wings but what is there is active and can be trimmed by the driver. Active suspension and durable sticky tyres to maximise mechanical grip. Every racing driver will tell you the difference between a good driver and great driver is in the corners so the rules have to be made such that following a car in the corners degrades car performance to the absolute minimum.

I thoroughly agree with you. Other areas would not only be more relevant, but wouldn't have an outright negative effect on racing. A more powerful PU or a better suspension wouldn't impair the performance of the car behing you.

I can't see why F1 couldn't work with standardizes aero kits or even without aerodynamic downforce.

The moment that they standardise either aero or engines then myself and I suspect many others will stop paying attention to F1.

The different packages that teams come up with is a big part of the allure for me and those like me who are tech guys.

You still didn't answer my previous question, just deflected it. If you remove aero from F1 then the cars become much slower, this removes the allure that F1 is the pinnacle of motor racing. Removing that feeling will almost guaranteed make many of the sponsors walk. They like the association of their company working with the "best in the world."

As an alternative, if you standardise aero then it just becomes the same as indycar and again the allure of it being the pinnacle Motorsport goes away.

If you hate aero so much and don't care for these cars to be the fastest out there then why don't you pay as much attention to any of the other racing series which closer match your ideals?

[turbof1]

But does even F1 deepen understanding? They use CFD tech from whoever they get it from and do a lot of trial and error in wind tunnels and on track to come up with something that works best for them. They use the tech, whether they ever add to it I have no knowledge of.

There's several thousands of terrabytes of data generated in that field, experience is being created, efficiency increases in getting said data. I'd say: yes.

Easily done. Just provide higher downforce (low turbulance) aero kits when necessary, and be done with it.

We can apply that same oversimplified logic on world hunger: to eradicate hunger, just provide food to the hungry places. Easily done.

It's not. I'm not going to spend my time on explaining why; I'm sure you know the answer yourself, but let me give a hint: it required hundreds of hours in the windtunnel just to get an appreciatible understanding of turbulent wake. This is not child's play. For the record, I don't want to say there is no low hanging fruit either. One rather easy to apply solution is to reduce turbulent wake from the wheels through wheel covers. But than you'll be kicking the F1 purist hornet's nest.

And how great of a folly it proved to be, in the name of such superficial reasons.

Each to their opinion, but I'd bet if F1 had the speed of a soapcrate car race, nobody here would be watching. What you call superficial reason is for many, I'd dare say most here, a reason to watch.

[mzso]

The moment that they standardise either aero or engines then myself and I suspect many others will stop paying attention to F1.

The different packages that teams come up with is a big part of the allure for me and those like me who are tech guys

Yet, you're fine with (poorly) over-regulated dysfunctional gunk. I don't see this as a loss. Some people always whine with every rule change. And they always think they speak in the name of "most fans".

Anyway a defunct "pinnacle" is useless. Something that collapses due to people getting fed up being bored.

As an alternative, if you standardise aero then it just becomes the same as indycar and again the allure of it being the pinnacle Motorsport goes away.

It doesn't. In indycar they buy pretty much everything. From chassis to motor. It just ceases to become a "pinnacle" in your eyes.

[mzso]

We can apply that same oversimplified logic on world hunger: to eradicate hunger, just provide food to the hungry places. Easily done.

It would be hard to come up with a less valid simile. Providing food to everyone is costly and complicated. Meanwhile designing a single set of aero components centrally is cheaper and simpler than everyone designing their own.

Each to their opinion, but I'd bet if F1 had the speed of a soapcrate car race, nobody here would be watching. What you call superficial reason is for many, I'd dare say most here, a reason to watch.

Juvenile hyperboles won't improve your point either. The fact that there wasn't a big jump in viewer numbers (actually it decreased sine then) proves how worthless the change was.

[Shakeman]

As an alternative, if you standardise aero then it just becomes the same as indycar and again the allure of it being the pinnacle Motorsport goes away.

No, you could standardise certain parts of the aero such as active wings and floor and leave the teams to design the rest of the chassis within the rules. There should be enough variation to pick out a Red Bull from a Ferrari from body shape alone.

Having said that, If the 2019 cars were rolled out with flat grey livery you'd be hard pressed to put a name to the team, there isn't a great deal of difference between the F1 cars most of the laptime is created by details only CFD can see.

The Pinnacle of Motorsport should mean really fast cars with prospects of overtaking with the best drivers in the world. I don't think anyone would give two wet turds what the cars actually looked like if the whole package made racing a huge spectacle again or even better than it actually ever has been. There's plenty under the skin of an F1 car for car manufacturers to show their engineering and development prowess if the rules are opened up for them to do so.

[turbof1]

We can apply that same oversimplified logic on world hunger: to eradicate hunger, just provide food to the hungry places. Easily done.

It would be hard to come up with a less valid simile. Providing food to everyone is costly and complicated. Meanwhile designing a single set of aero components centrally is cheaper and simpler than everyone designing their own.

Each to their opinion, but I'd bet if F1 had the speed of a soapcrate car race, nobody here would be watching. What you call superficial reason is for many, I'd dare say most here, a reason to watch.

Juvenile hyperboles won't improve your point either. The fact that there wasn't a big jump in viewer numbers (actually it decreased sine then) proves how worthless the change was.

Great, so we have determined you:
-Have too limited knowledge to debate this
-Are too stubborn to acknowledge that and resort to sticking needlessly to your point
-Call people juvenile when they bring up valid points

I suggest the rest of us continue debating the actual topic title and you go somewhere more suited to your preferences.

[Just_a_fan]

The fact that there wasn't a big jump in viewer numbers (actually it decreased sine then) proves how worthless the change was.

The drop in viewer numbers is due to F1's current course of hiding the sport behind paywall broadcasters.

[mzso]

-Call people juvenile when they bring up valid points

Nope. Only you who came up with atrocious hyperboles and invalid similes, to brush over your hollow points. Others stuck to actual arguments.

Because neither was there soapbox racing before they made everything worse for 2017. Nor would supplying the same aero-kits be complicated, or difficult.

[trinidefender]

-Call people juvenile when they bring up valid points

Nope. Only you who came up with atrocious hyperboles and invalid similes, to brush over your hollow points. Others stuck to actual arguments.

Because neither was there soapbox racing before they made everything worse for 2017. Nor would supplying the same aero-kits be complicated, or difficult.

You're conflating two totally separate issues. Do you want standard aero kits or do you want no aero?

Both concepts have valid arguments against them.

If you want standard aero kits then what do you hope to achieve? That won't necissarily make racing closer.

If you want no aero then that will slow the cars down immensely, at that point then it stops being the height of motorsports. Again, if you hate aero then why not watch any other series that has much less of it? The fat is that you aren't. F1 cars being the fastest in the world has a big allure to many people.

[mzso]

You're conflating two totally separate issues.

I'm not. I responded specific things of his comment.

If you want standard aero kits then what do you hope to achieve? That won't necissarily make racing closer.

It would be rather foolish to provide standardized aero kits and not have them be the most appropriate for close racing, don't you think?

If you want no aero then that will slow the cars down immensely, at that point then it stops being the height of motorsports. Again, if you hate aero then why not watch any other series that has much less of it? The fat is that you aren't. F1 cars being the fastest in the world has a big allure to many people.

Actually I wouldn't mind no aero. Though it would be more interesting as a second formula run on parralel, maybe with a combined championship awarded. Would add some variety. And racing would be very different when they could follow arbitrarily closely, and could spin the wheels above 200 km/h.
Of course we'd still need aero that doesn't suck for the main formula.

Aero doesn't make it the pinnacle of motorsport. Technology (not so much these days), engineering efforts put into designing cars, and first class drivers do.

Also there's no true alternative. You have feeder series and maybe Indycar and FE (which is low key).

[turbof1]

I suggest the rest of us continue debating the actual topic title and you go somewhere more suited to your preferences.

We are going to do this. Each their own opinion; enough philosphical off topic discussion, let's stick to the actual discussion about the 2017-2020 aerodynamic technical regulations.

[Blackout]

Lowe and Symonds have often misquoted and oversimplified the "ground effect defenders" arguments by saying "all these people want to take the wings off bla bla"... Wrong, that's a big shortcut. some of them did, while others wanted a little increase in GE etc.
Indeed the OWG failed because they left too many loopholes... and because their car were fugly
Hence the skirts. These could:
-stop or greatly moderate that development madness around the FW endplates, bargeboards and the reliance on out-wash and big vortexes etc
-->so we can simplify the FW and many parts of the aero
-->increase GE a bit
-->so we can reduce FW size
-->get less dirtyair-sensitive cars
Obviously, RW and diffuser would need to be tweaked and adapted.

[mzso]

It's the same findings as the original overtaking working group in 2007/08.

"The brief going into the project was that you wanted it all in the floor, all ground effects, and take the wings off the car -- even now everybody says that," Lowe explains. "A lot of the pieces tried were around those themes and we also had the Central Downwash Wing [a concept to split the rear wing into two sections].

"The first interesting thing that came out was that the Central Downwash Wing actually acted negatively on the following car and made it worse, but not far off that was having no rear wing at all. The best thing was to have a rear wing as we did, but refine it by having it narrower and higher. The reason is that the flow structures and the two vortices at the top of the two endplates are very strong energisers of fresh flow to re-energise the wake, whereas if you have no rear wing you end up with a very messy wake that hangs around. These two vortices bring in fresh air from the sides and dispel the low energy wake that's there. So actually you need a strong rear wing and, adjusting a few parameters, you can make it even more effective. That was unexpected.

And the current overtaking group at FOM lead by Brawn/Symmonds/Somerville along with Tombazis at the FIA.

Keeping the wake closer to the centreline of the car isn’t simply an exercise in narrowing the field of turbulence: the significance is, by keeping the turbulent air close inboard, it stays in the zone where it will be collected by the rear wing and thrust upward and, it is to be hoped, over the following car in a phenomenon aerodynamicists refer to as ‘mushrooming’.

“The rear wing helps us when we’re trying to promote closer racing,” explains Tombazis. “It has two strong trailing vortices, which pull the flow up from close to the ground into the ‘mushroom’. This mushroom is pushed upwards quite violently and quickly, allowing clean air to be pulled in from the sides to take the place of the turbulent air being flung upwards. This clean air tends to be higher energy, which has a beneficial effect on the aerodynamics of the following car. “We want to increase that mushroom effect and make it stronger, but also put more of the dirty air into its vicinity to push it up and out of the way.”

I don't recall any studies being performed ahead of that proposal. We know the OWG used fondmetal/aerolab for their CFD and wind tunnel studies. I also don't recall seeing any spec other than the usual "ground effect" and "like the 80's" quotes. Neither of which actually define what it will look like - it could have still have had a massive rear wing like Indycar have.

A thought occurred to me just now. It's said that the rear wing can be used to divert airflow upwards to create this 'mushrooming' fenomenon.
But I see no reason the same couldn't be accomplished by a wingless GE car. It already collects essentially all the airflow. If you move the wheel inside the chassis, which you should do in any case. Currently they only serve as drag/turbulence generators. (From the angle of aerodynamics)
So you could just divert the airflow analogously by raising the trailing edge of the car, right?

[jjn9128]

A thought occurred to me just now. It's said that the rear wing can be used to divert airflow upwards to create this 'mushrooming' fenomenon.
But I see no reason the same couldn't be accomplished by a wingless GE car. It already collects essentially all the airflow. If you move the wheel inside the chassis, which you should do in any case. Currently they only serve as drag/turbulence generators. (From the angle of aerodynamics)
So you could just divert the airflow analogously by raising the trailing edge of the car, right?

The rear wing works in 2 ways 1) it produces upwash and 2) it produces a strong pair of vortices which enhance that upwash on the centreline of the car and pull 'clean' air in from the sides of the car. The mushrooming happens because the low velocity air is pulled up to rotate around the vortex cores. It looks like this:


Where a "ground effect" underbody would not help that is because the pressure created on the surface of the floor infers a pressure on the ground which cancels the circulation of the body, and reduces wake upwash, so the wake hangs around at the height of another car. More downforce created from bigger tunnels means greater vorticity from the diffuser endfences too, which will hang around because there's no upwash (net not local) to pull them away from the ground. Bigger vortices near the ground increases turbulence in the wake downstream of the car.

The rear wing as also high enough in the air that it's wake is not affecting a following car. It's the wake of the wheels, body, and diffuser which disturbs another car's front wing. So while it's responsible for 15-20% of the total car drag it's not really impacting another car.