2017-2020 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[turbof1]

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.

I think you can have reasonable debate whether or not they should have been able to close the loopholes. However, and please anybody correct me if I am wrong, but these loopholes were present before 2009. It also required very radical thinking and even technically having an illegal car while it's driving around (because a piece bended and closed down a critical hole that otherwise would have completely undermined the double diffuser concept) (this is of course impossible to test when it was stationary and the particular piece had a very small margin of space inbetween).

In my opinion, that loophole should have been declared illegal right when protest was lodged, or for 2010. They didn't, so all the work from the OWG got nullified. For the record, the OWG was a research group that gave advise on the 2009 regulations. Ultimately the authority and therefore responsibility for closing down loopholes lied with the FIA.

GE is btw no holy grail. Increase GE and you will also increase turbulent airflow coming out of the diffuser. You need mushrooming, that is a big rear wing, to get that turbulent flow launched up high in the air, else it will just be thrown rather horizontally into the following car. People have a big conception that GE does not produce turbulent flow, while it really does. They also think GE is not susceptible to turbulent flow, while it is just like any other aerodynamic platform. If you remove or reduce FW dependency, you are increasing splitter/bargeboard dependency and you are just moving the problem downwards.

A serious start to solving the problem, would be to reduce local areas that produce turbulent flow and are detrimental on the car itself already. I strongly advocate closed wheels.

[Shakeman]

The main problem of the OWG, like most things in F1, is that it's a committee that came to the flawed decisions. Even without the double diffuser the proposals were not radical enough and in any event you aren't going to get a load of aero dynamicists to agree to comprehensively reduce their roles in F1.

It needs a single person like Ross Braun to dictate what F1 looks like and the teams either accept it or piss off and set up their own race series and not have the teams water down radical proposals.

[Just_a_fan]

You'd have to get rid of Ferrari's veto before you could absolutely force anything through. So long as a team has the ability to say "no", the rule makers have their hands tied.

I have no idea whether Ferrari have used their veto recently/ever, but it's not healthy for F1 for a team to have that facility.

[mzso]

You'd have to get rid of Ferrari's veto before you could absolutely force anything through. So long as a team has the ability to say "no", the rule makers have their hands tied.

I have no idea whether Ferrari have used their veto recently/ever, but it's not healthy for F1 for a team to have that facility.

Yeah, that's a great big abomination. It's ridiculous that Ecclestone let them have veto rights. Despite all pretenses they're not particularly important. Every 10-20 years they put together a car/team that earns a couple championships.
(On the other hand they are totally dependent on F1 to keep up the Ferrari myth.)

Fortunately for the veto does not apply to 2021. (As long as they don't put it in the next Concorde agreement)

[mzso]

It needs a single person like Ross Braun to dictate what F1 looks like and the teams either accept it or piss off and set up their own race series and not have the teams water down radical proposals.

I'm not sure if even he can wrangle through a radical change across this great big political cesspool.

[turbof1]

You'd have to get rid of Ferrari's veto before you could absolutely force anything through. So long as a team has the ability to say "no", the rule makers have their hands tied.

I have no idea whether Ferrari have used their veto recently/ever, but it's not healthy for F1 for a team to have that facility.

Yeah, that's a great big abomination. It's ridiculous that Ecclestone let them have veto rights. Despite all pretenses they're not particularly important. Every 10-20 years they put together a car/team that earns a couple championships.
(On the other hand they are totally dependent on F1 to keep up the Ferrari myth.)

Fortunately for the veto does not apply to 2021. (As long as they don't put it in the next Concorde agreement)

Fun fact: there is no actual concorde agreement currently, only bilateral agreements. Still ferrari has that veto.

[henry]

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:
https://imgr2.auto-motor-und-sport.de/C ... 182132.jpg

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.

That might suggest that reducing the downforce from the underbody and increasing wing downforce might be beneficial in reducing the proportion of the wake that the following car encounters. A corollary is that cars that make the most downforce from the underbody will be most difficult to follow because their smaller rear wings will create less upwash.

[jjn9128]

That might suggest that reducing the downforce from the underbody and increasing wing downforce might be beneficial in reducing the proportion of the wake that the following car encounters. A corollary is that cars that make the most downforce from the underbody will be most difficult to follow because their smaller rear wings will create less upwash.

Well... yes and no.... reducing drag would also be a way to combat the wake effect for a following car. Massive rear wings are inherently draggy (not that that is necessarily bad for a following car as it's producing a wake way up in the the air, and not that underbody aero is drag free) which may not in itself be a bad thing if the FIA want to control straight line speeds...

There's a balance to be found, with lower drag and a wing vs floor downforce balance.

[Shakeman]

I'm not sure if even he can wrangle through a radical change across this great big political cesspool.

My fear too. As Just_a_fan points out the Ferrari Veto is all powerful.

[djos]

That might suggest that reducing the downforce from the underbody and increasing wing downforce might be beneficial in reducing the proportion of the wake that the following car encounters. A corollary is that cars that make the most downforce from the underbody will be most difficult to follow because their smaller rear wings will create less upwash.

Well... yes and no.... reducing drag would also be a way to combat the wake effect for a following car. Massive rear wings are inherently draggy (not that that is necessarily bad for a following car as it's producing a wake way up in the the air, and not that underbody aero is drag free) which may not in itself be a bad thing if the FIA want to control straight line speeds...

There's a balance to be found, with lower drag and a wing vs floor downforce balance.

That would explain why the CART series, during the heyday of the Lola chassis, where able to produce such good racing. They still had big (but simple) wings but combined with the underbody wing where able to race quite closely together.

[henry]

That might suggest that reducing the downforce from the underbody and increasing wing downforce might be beneficial in reducing the proportion of the wake that the following car encounters. A corollary is that cars that make the most downforce from the underbody will be most difficult to follow because their smaller rear wings will create less upwash.

Well... yes and no.... reducing drag would also be a way to combat the wake effect for a following car. Massive rear wings are inherently draggy (not that that is necessarily bad for a following car as it's producing a wake way up in the the air, and not that underbody aero is drag free) which may not in itself be a bad thing if the FIA want to control straight line speeds...

There's a balance to be found, with lower drag and a wing vs floor downforce balance.

That sounds rather more yes than no. I guess the big issue is that a proposal of say, bigger,higher wings and smaller diffuser, would reduce top speed and might increase lap times and we have seen from the last round of changes that the FOM/FIA desire is for “faster”. Oh and more drag/longer lap times would lead to higher fuel usage and more lift and coast. Nobody likes that.

[Zynerji]

Why bother with skirts? Just ban wings, winglets, aero flaps, all those nasty stuff. And let the shape of the body be the only way to create aerodynamic downforce. That would certainly simplify things.

They would just build wings, winglets and aero flaps into the body shape...

That can also be prevented by regulation. Either explicitly or maybe something like limiting feature size would suffice.

You do understand regulations doing this very thing is why things are so expensive now, correct?

Make them share their designs and data at every race and see how quickly they stop burning millions for hundreths of a second.

[Shakeman]

You do understand regulations doing this very thing is why things are so expensive now, correct?

Make them share their designs and data at every race and see how quickly they stop burning millions for hundreths of a second.

I think it's more that the regulations allow teams to go in search of laptime deep into the diminishing returns areas of aero development.

We don't have to see a 2019 car to know that the barge board area is going to be mahoosively complex yet it does nothing for me as a spectator. The designs are far too complex for even the most expert of armchair aerodynamicist to analyse beyond sweeping brush strokes.

They'll keep burning the money because the teams know their solutions only work on their own aero concept so I only see regulations as the answer. Regulate all the aero noise generators off the car and regulate body work onto the car which tidies up the wake for the following car.

[Zynerji]

You do understand regulations doing this very thing is why things are so expensive now, correct?

Make them share their designs and data at every race and see how quickly they stop burning millions for hundreths of a second.

I think it's more that the regulations allow teams to go in search of laptime deep into the diminishing returns areas of aero development.

We don't have to see a 2019 car to know that the barge board area is going to be mahoosively complex yet it does nothing for me as a spectator. The designs are far too complex for even the most expert of armchair aerodynamicist to analyse beyond sweeping brush strokes.

They'll keep burning the money because the teams know their solutions only work on their own aero concept so I only see regulations as the answer. Regulate all the aero noise generators off the car and regulate body work onto the car which tidies up the wake for the following car.

That gets us questionably close to a spec series. I don't think adding even more regulation is the answer...

[bjpower]

I think shorten the cars would solve a few issues all round.

1. It would reduce the dependence on rake and make it more difficult to set up vortexes to seal the defuser. While amazing they can do it. The aero is so complex the fun has gone out of trying to figure out what each part does.
2. It's easier to get a shorter car around and other short car. So should help overtaking.
3. It will make the cars bulkier. Without the length it will make it more difficult to package everything in such a sleek fashion. While this should make the cars a bit draggier I think they would find it difficult to steer vortexes and the like around the bulk and rely on more simple aero that would not be as badly impacted by wake of the car in front.

Not a silver bullet but I really think it would help