[MVRC] Mantium Virtual Racecar Challenge 2019 (Grand Prix Cars)

[wb92]

Honestly if it would depend on me I would rather keep open-wheel concept, but any closed wheels then something which would look like Red Bull x2014



but then we can go back to do LMP cars, and I don't think that was the case for such switch to open-wheelers this year

[variante]

Since we're on this topic...

Option 1:
My ideal of beauty for Formula cars is the RedBull X1 (a cleaner version of the x2014).
It doesn't only look good, but also leaves good design freedom without proposing overwhelming challenges (for us, MVRC designers, not 100 people aero departments) like...i don't know...wheel wake control.
BTW, with "overwhelming challenges" i mean challenges that generally require a lot of optimization, where you might randomly crack the code and keep on developing your car OR (more likely) get stuck and lose a lot of time on that alone.

Option 2:
F1 2021 rules look good too, judging from the existing prototype car. Following closely F1 rules for the next MVRC season would be very convenient: we could even produce 2021 cars before anyone else and, why not, catch the interest of F1 teams and even give them some ideas. I know for a fact that some F1 guys know about MVRC already.

Option 3 (jjn9128):
jjn9128 proposal looks good. I like that it's very linear and simple. I like the aeroscreen: looks good and simplifies many things. Same for wheel pods. But i don't understand the venturi minum height thing...i mean, isn't a minimum height always there?... thus isn't maximum height more relevant?

All in all:

If i had to decide for next year, i'd go for 2021 F1 rules. It's a rare opportunity to lead the field and be under the spotlight.
I'd also choose the actual and unmodified F1 rules for aerodynamics. Maybe with some rewording for better comprehension and less strict rules check (who cares if the "75mm rule" is broken by 5mm...).

Otherwise, i'd go for a full custom one thought to ease the design phase: no oblique lines, no stupid limitations like the penis nose, no time consuming challenges, yes design freedom, yes wheelpods, yes closed cockpit,...

Basically: if you give us a though challenge, make the reward worth the effort, otherwise reduce the effort in the first place.

[wb92]

Since we're on this topic...

Option 1:
My ideal of beauty for Formula cars is the RedBull X1 (a cleaner version of the x2014).
It doesn't only look good, but also leaves good design freedom without proposing overwhelming challenges (for us, MVRC designers, not 100 people aero departments) like...i don't know...wheel wake control.
BTW, with "overwhelming challenges" i mean challenges that generally require a lot of optimization, where you might randomly crack the code and keep on developing your car OR (more likely) get stuck and lose a lot of time on that alone.

Option 2:
F1 2021 rules look good too, judging from the existing prototype car. Following closely F1 rules for the next MVRC season would be very convenient: we could even produce 2021 cars before anyone else and, why not, catch the interest of F1 teams and even give them some ideas. I know for a fact that some F1 guys know about MVRC already.

Option 3 (jjn9128):
jjn9128 proposal looks good. I like that it's very linear and simple. I like the aeroscreen: looks good and simplifies many things. Same for wheel pods. But i don't understand the venturi minum height thing...i mean, isn't a minimum height always there?... thus isn't maximum height more relevant?

All in all:

If i had to decide for next year, i'd go for 2021 F1 rules. It's a rare opportunity to lead the field and be under the spotlight.
I'd also choose the actual and unmodified F1 rules for aerodynamics. Maybe with some rewording for better comprehension and less strict rules check (who cares if the "75mm rule" is broken by 5mm...).

Otherwise, i'd go for a full custom one thought to ease the design phase: no oblique lines, no stupid limitations like the penis nose, no time consuming challenges, yes design freedom, yes wheelpods, yes closed cockpit,...

Basically: if you give us a though challenge, make the reward worth the effort, otherwise reduce the effort in the first place.

I would just let machin and LVDH to work on new rules, I will take any of these cars and make it quick
simple.

[CAEdevice]

Well... I will try to be as concise as possibile, because I am focused on this year's challenge (by the way, after the race in Japan I will resume the development of the car).

The most important thing is realism, so I would like to see features as intercooler hx, brakes cooling flow, revised lower region of the safe cell and step near the diffuser, more realistic centre of rotation for the rake.

Once realism is achieved, the layout is less important.

F1-2019, F1-2021, LMPx, F-videogame would all be ok, but I agree with the one who said that F1-2021 (with some regions of freedom, just like this year) would be a good opportunity to promote sinergies.

[variante]

I would just let machin and LVDH to work on new rules, I will take any of these cars and make it quick
simple.

Dictatorships don't make people happy.
Having just 1 or 2 people working on a project might make it come up faster and in a more straight forward fashion, but it might also imply lower quality of the final product.
Also, our contribution might decrease the amount of effort from the organizers' side, despite a necessarily more laborious discussion.

[wb92]

The most important thing is realism, so I would like to see features as intercooler hx, brakes cooling flow, revised lower region of the safe cell and step near the diffuser, more realistic centre of rotation for the rake.

Once realism is achieved, the layout is less important.

F1-2019, F1-2021, LMPx, F-videogame would all be ok, but I agree with the one who said that F1-2021 (with some regions of freedom, just like this year) would be a good opportunity to promote sinergies.

intercooler hx won't be big deal for computing, but brakes cooling flow - that can be very tricky to achieve with current quality of simulations. if you want to make it really proper - then be prepared for lots of cells inside the rims.
setting ride heights would be more realistic than the rake, but problem would be suspension model, so what's currently is fair compromise, not to say that to get along with rideheights or more advanced rakes you would need to start prepare basic maps to find out where the performance lays. that would make people with more computational power in priviledged position, so it's not easy to make it accessible also for beginners in aero world.

Edit:
We can also add wing settings, DRS... aeroelastics... will definitely bring it more to the reality

I would just let machin and LVDH to work on new rules, I will take any of these cars and make it quick
simple.

Dictatorships don't make people happy.
Having just 1 or 2 people working on a project might make it come up faster and in a more straight forward fashion, but it might also imply lower quality of the final product.
Also, our contribution might decrease the amount of effort from the organizers' side, despite a necessarily more laborious discussion.

in some cases democracy is not a solution neither.
why you assume that product would be lower quality? so far looks like soon it will have more entrances than the whole F1 grid and new people are coming and will come if rules will be around so expected F1-2021 changes.

I agree that who can should support with some points, but if you really want to be more realistic with simulations - be prepared that I7-x770 (where x is the intel gen spec number) with Threadrippers, and 16GB of RAM (hopefully dual channel) might be not enough to get one calculation done in less than 20h keeping the quality of the results, not saying about making a sweep through the rake/right heights. Add to it bit complex 'cooperation' with openfoam which takes time.

Even if it's not as real as it should be (or as some people want) it still gives interesting experiences and some knowledge about this and that, even if at the moment I have short break from car development.

It's still like a racing game, not everyone likes arcade, not everyone has time and skills to master every corner in sim-racing, but still you can enjoy both and have fun.

PS
I really don't know why you stick to fix that bottom part of the chassis in the tea-tray area... I kinda got your points, but still

[machin]

Having just 1 or 2 people working on a project might make it come up faster and in a more straight forward fashion, but it might also imply lower quality of the final product.
Also, our contribution might decrease the amount of effort from the organizers' side, despite a necessarily more laborious discussion.

I’ll try not to take too much offence at the first comment ....

As for the second; it seems just looking at the preceding page that we already have more ideas than contributors... so that doesn’t really make our job any easier!

Maybe here’s a hint from my ‘real life’; If a company delivers a nice CAD model of their equipment upfront with the minimum of fuss (and no pushiness) it’s more likely (not guaranteed) that their equipment will be incorporated into my design, since they’ve just made my job really easy. Hint 2; We’re using FreeCAD format to build the parts.

[variante]

in some cases democracy is not a solution neither.

No problem then, because it will never be a democracy, as LVDH will always have the last word.
I'm just saying that people here might happen to have nice and rational ideas, and that it would be wise to listen to them.
Anyway, note that i talked about making people happy, not only about increasing the efficiency of the process (machin, i'm talking to you too).

To simplify the discussion we might differenciate rational observations from personal preferences (which, nonetheless, have their dignity).

For example, you just made a good observation about realism and the need to keep simulation time low. It was essentially an objective observation as only someone with a supercomputer might disagree with that, someone who is presumably non existent among us MVRC contenders.
I previously made a remark in similar fashion, about the need to reduce CAD design time.

Probably, LVDH already knows about both these needs, but may need to be reminded. He might also want to probe people's personal preferences in order to take more popular decisions and make the challenge itself more popular, if that's the target.

I’ll try not to take too much offence at the first comment ....

Yeah...it was not an offence. Exceptions aside, humans work better in groups: we compensate each other's deficiencies. If you had let us check the rules before the final release, the ruleset would have been better.

As for the second; it seems just looking at the preceding page that we already have more ideas than contributors... so that doesn’t really make our job any easier!

Have you factored in the time you took to study F1 rules, adapt them, produce the CAD models, answer CAEdevice's criticisms, correct the rules after the first race,...? In fact, some of these points may have been avoided or subcontracted to us.

PS
I really don't know why you stick to fix that bottom part of the chassis in the tea-tray area... I kinda got your points, but still

Are you talking about my car?

[LVDH]

I'd also choose the actual and unmodified F1 rules for aerodynamics. Maybe with some rewording for better comprehension and less strict rules check (who cares if the "75mm rule" is broken by 5mm...).

Something like this would never work. In order to check the cars, we need very clear rules. Otherwise we do not have any rules in the end but a lot of discussions. So the dictator says, no to this.

Basically: if you give us a though challenge, make the reward worth the effort, otherwise reduce the effort in the first place.

There is a prize for the champ winner. Of course it will never justify all the work you put into this. Although the Adrian Newey book was super cool and even awarded to everyone (Big thanks to CAEdevice).
However, in the end, the joy and pleasure you extract out of MVRC has to come out of yourself. The work you put into MVRC will always be irrational and if you look at it, what engineers and mechanics do in F1 is the same. It is just crazy.

I’ll try not to take too much offence at the first comment ....

Yeah...it was not an offence. Exceptions aside, humans work better in groups: we compensate each other's deficiencies. If you had let us check the rules before the final release, the ruleset would have been better.

Well, too many people are not always of advantage. This does not mean that we do not value your opinions and suggestions. We just try to give all this a balance to make sure the championship can commence as structured and ordered possible.
For next year, I think 2021 cars would be super cool. As machine said, help from you guys would help a lot. If some of you want to prepare all the CAD data in FreeCAD or another open source tool, we would probably use that. But we also need to get the 2020 season started in time, to make sure we can stretch out the next season better and have more time between the races.

[wb92]

Don't know if anyone seen that, but can help for some:

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... pUMFVqKx1Y

[machin]

Don't know if anyone seen that, but can help for some:

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... pUMFVqKx1Y

Nice.

Here's a question then; the wings on real F1 cars typically have quite a bit of overlap between flaps and mainplanes (see left-hand image below, taken from Scarbs twitter feed).... but the top teams in MVRC seem to have very little to no overlap.... is this a function of cell size, or is there some other reason for this difference?

[CAEdevice]

Do you mean CAEdevice is not a top team (joking )?

My wings (and not only, also the bargeboards elements) overlaps in that way, but in frontal view you don't see it because I use a large gap (5-10mm) to avoid strange effects caused by the mesh (we recently talked about it in this forum).

By the way: thanks for the image! I had it in mind when I proposed to replace the 10mm rule with a 5mm rule plus 1mm minimim thickness on the trailing edge, bit I could not find it.

[machin]

Do you mean CAEdevice is not a top team (joking )?

My wings (and not only, also the bargeboards elements) overlaps in that way, but in frontal view you don't see it because I use a large gap (5-10mm) to avoid strange effects caused by the mesh (we recently talked about it in this forum).

Yes, from the images your wings look quite similar to Variante’s... If you look back through past MVRC seasons when Variante has shown some of the details of his cars we see that he has always used almost no overlap... his wing elements almost seem to follow directly one after another (the above image doesn’t really show this clearly)...

Since yours and his overall car performance are very similar, can we say that the wings elements are quite tolerant of their positions relative to one another? Or do you think one or other of you is giving away performance in this area?

[CAEdevice]

I hope to find 10 minutes tomorrow and show some images.

I think that they are different design philosophies with similar results, but the tolerance is not very large, once you chose one of the two.

I probably try to deflect the flow more than Variante (and I have upwash vantages and problems) so I use the energised and oriented flow from the gaps in order to avoid separation (I also tryed to play with the separation bubble...). On the contrary, Variante front wing works more as a diffuser, but also does mine (only) at the sides, where I prefer to spend all the "possible" deviation to promote local out wash (I try to seal the floor while, traditionally, Variante prefers to feed the diffuser from the floor sides too).

[variante]

I conducted some experimets on overlaps during my 2nd year of this challenge (when it was still called KVRC). Longer overlaps seemed to be better, even though the difference was not huge. But i should probably repeat the comparison with today's design skills of mine, and with bertter criteria.

Anyway, the reason for small overlaps is that they allow me to follow more closely the wing curvature that i desire, which may outweigh the gap length issue.
Longer overlaps make it geometrically harder to reproduce such ideal line, especially when i have to deal with many flaps.
I think F1 teams do the same on their Front Wings: their overlaps don't seem any longer than ours.