2022 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[foxmulder_ms]

I don't believe these changes will result in more overtakes. The change in turbulent air may let car behind stay close at the corners but this will translate into slipstream losing its effect on straights so late brake passes, which is the majority of the overtake moves,will become more difficult.

[FW17]

See article linked at top of page
https://f1tcdn.net/images/features/2019/2019.jpg

With those boxes it looks like the current diffuser (taller) and barge board setup can be maintained with a whole lot of flip ups in front of the rear wheel as in 2008

[djos]

I don't believe these changes will result in more overtakes. The change in turbulent air may let car behind stay close at the corners but this will translate into slipstream losing its effect on straights so late brake passes, which is the majority of the overtake moves,will become more difficult.

Go watch some late 90's and early 2k's Champ Car races and you might think differently afterward - they had the same overall aero philosphy and the racing was excellent!

[InsideF1]

Wasn't the plank introduced to prevent flat bottomed cars from stalling? Since the 2021 cars won't be flat bottomed...why still have any kind of plank?

The plank is there as a regulatory aid to stop cars from running to low, i.e. it has to have a minimum amount of wear over a race distance. Also as a protective device so the chassis, PU and other internals don't get damaged in curbing. The former is less of an issue these days with the extreme rake cars run but was still a concern. Originally we wanted a much shorter plank (as only the front contacts the ground) but there was nervousness (rightly so) about PU's getting damaged. As such it was retained but made thinner for weight purposes.

[InsideF1]

So, do you people think that the performance gap between the top 3 teams and the rest will remain, decrease or (for whatever reason) even increase in 2021?

Million dollar question. The rules aim to tackle this in two ways. Firstly the cost cap limits the amount of money the leading teams can spend in areas of marginal gains. Whilst F1 needs to remain at the pinnacle of technology and technology must be a performance differentiater we wanted to limit the areas of the car where vast amounts of money are spent for tiny performance improvements. The cost cap is the most effective way of doing this. Secondly the regulations themselves go some way to removing the often black art of wake control. For example, the rear of the car has something of sledgehammer approach to dealing with tyre squirt which from my team days was an incredibly complicated area and one which even if well understood was at the mercy of correlation and methodology. Obviously the more money you have the better you can tackle these issues and therefore the smaller teams struggle. By regulating some of these areas away to a degree again we hope we can close the field up.

Ultimately the bigger teams will in the short term have a baked in advantage as effectively the lead they have at the moment they can bargain away by developing future cars earlier. As such for 2021 I can't imagine the competitive order being significantly different. Into the medium term though I definitely think the field spread will decrease.

[Wass85]

What cars from the past will these cars be most similar to, be that F1 or GP2?

[InsideF1]

Is there big scope for laptime improvement with these regulations over the next few years?

Our most recent wind tunnel session found 0.1-0.2 seconds of performance without even really looking for it. This is even with us being a very small team who wind tunnel test only a few days a month. Over the last months as the regulations have been tied down we have focused more on standard aero development to see if our solutions are robust and have in short order put almost double this on again in CFD.

I would be very surprised if teams in the first year do not find a second or so of performance.

[InsideF1]

[/quote]

Hi, I've been having a look at the flow comparison video posted recently:

https://www.facebook.com/Formula1/video ... 399851083/

Would it be possible to outline what simulation methods were used to create these results? The graph linked below suggests that a RANS based turbulence model was used, however, from my understanding, such methods wouldn't be capable of modelling the chaotic flow at the level shown in the video above.

[/quote]

Our standard day to day development recipe is run using a RANS model, similar to what teams do. Indeed, team correlation with our methods has been encouragingly close across a number of baselines. However, teams largely use RANS to maximise turnaround (shorter run time) and also because they can get more runs using these tool sets under the ATR restrictions. We are obviously limited by neither and have also significantly leveraged unsteady simulations given the baked in compromises RANS has modelling turbulent flow. For example, a two car DDES simulation could take up to 18,000 CPU hours to solve which is about 20-30 times longer than a RANS case. We have a partnership with AWS that provides HPC cloud services which means we can run these cases in a matter of hours.

Our unsteady development uses a number of different methods, mainly DDES but also LBM on occasion.

[InsideF1]

I don't believe these changes will result in more overtakes. The change in turbulent air may let car behind stay close at the corners but this will translate into slipstream losing its effect on straights so late brake passes, which is the majority of the overtake moves,will become more difficult.

Whilst slipstreaming is a factor it is largely obviated by DRS which is a far more effective method of achieving the same. If what you say is true (which I have my doubts) then any lost slipstream can be compensated with by DRS. I believe the fact that the cars are closer able to follow, particularly in corners will mean they come on to straights much closer to each other and thus slipstreaming or DRS does not need to be more powerful. Also, a large number of overtakes are born out of the lead driver making a mistake which will happen if they are under more pressure and thus again why close following is important.

Please note that the aim of the regulations is NOT specifically to increase overtaking. If we wanted to do that we could have made DRS bigger or even used active aero to hamper the lead car. The aim of the regulations is to allow close, racing, more battling, greater fights. That there will be more overtakes if we achieve this is the cherry on the cake.

[InsideF1]

with those boxes it looks like the current diffuser (taller) and barge board setup can be maintained with a whole lot of flip ups in front of the rear wheel as in 2008

The regulations are written to prevent the diffuser outwashing flow as they do currently. Teams maximise lateral expansion for load as vertical expansion is limited. We have removed the vertical limit and imposed much stricter lateral expansion controls which keeps the wake narrow. Bargeboards currently live in a regulation box in front of the sidepod which has been removed, the only elements that can live in this area now are two fences with limited twist regulated by virtual surfaces (in a similar way to front wing strikes are currently controlled) Flip ups in front of the tyres are not possible as bodywork in this area is still governed by the R75 regulation. You could in theory have a flip up but it would needs to be 150mm thick. Certainly in 2009 when this regulation first came in, 150mm flicks did not work have have not reappeared since.

It is worth noting that the bodywork regulations, other than simplifying the sidepod leading edges, are predominantly the same as now so I would be very surprised to see extremely different shapes. There may be more of a focus in directing high CpT flow away from the rear corner to car centre-line with the reappearance of the low beam and the more tightly prescribed rear corner but I wouldn't bet the mortgage on this.

[mclaren111]

Hate the deflectors above the front tyres...

[FW17]

with those boxes it looks like the current diffuser (taller) and barge board setup can be maintained with a whole lot of flip ups in front of the rear wheel as in 2008

The regulations are written to prevent the diffuser outwashing flow as they do currently. Teams maximise lateral expansion for load as vertical expansion is limited. We have removed the vertical limit and imposed much stricter lateral expansion controls which keeps the wake narrow. Bargeboards currently live in a regulation box in front of the sidepod which has been removed, the only elements that can live in this area now are two fences with limited twist regulated by virtual surfaces (in a similar way to front wing strikes are currently controlled) Flip ups in front of the tyres are not possible as bodywork in this area is still governed by the R75 regulation. You could in theory have a flip up but it would needs to be 150mm thick. Certainly in 2009 when this regulation first came in, 150mm flicks did not work have have not reappeared since.

It is worth noting that the bodywork regulations, other than simplifying the sidepod leading edges, are predominantly the same as now so I would be very surprised to see extremely different shapes. There may be more of a focus in directing high CpT flow away from the rear corner to car centre-line with the reappearance of the low beam and the more tightly prescribed rear corner but I wouldn't bet the mortgage on this.

The new front edge of the floor is to provide the maximum out wash, currently teams are doing exactly that to seal the floor and crate the low pressure. It looks like a dream come true to play around with all those fences at the leading edge.


At the rear what is to prevent the sudden sloping of the tunnel to a diffuser as it is being done now, with the endplate of the rear wing, beam wing and body work between the the rear wheel and diffuser it all looks like there is enough scope for the expansion of the underfloor air both outward and upwards

I am not sure if the teams would be forced to use tunnels when they can tailor the current flat floor and diffuser to work better. Tunnels work with high speed air creating a low pressure, while current set up is for sealing with out wash so as to have less air run under creating a low pressure could yield them better results

[InsideF1]

At the rear what is to prevent the sudden sloping of the tunnel to a diffuser as it is being done now, with the endplate of the rear wing, beam wing and body work between the the rear wheel and diffuser it all looks like there is enough scope for the expansion of the underfloor air both outward and upwards

I am not sure if the teams would be forced to use tunnels when they can tailor the current flat floor and diffuser to work better. Tunnels work with high speed air creating a low pressure, while current set up is for sealing with out wash so as to have less air run under creating a low pressure could yield them better results

https://i2.wp.com/cdn-1.motorsport.com/ ... =696&ssl=1

The floor reference volume both forces you to have a tunnel (you can't have a flat floor) and limits the diffuser outwash. There is a reference surface which the outer wall of the diffuser has to cover but the volume the outer wall has to fit in is very narrow preventing using outwash.

Our feeling is that teams would maximise the forward tunnel height as this is the only way to get tall powerfull fences. There is an attraction to a flat floor if you can generate your vorticity upstream of it with bargeboards but the potential to do that has been removed.

[FW17]

Our feeling is that teams would maximise the forward tunnel height as this is the only way to get tall powerfull fences. There is an attraction to a flat floor if you can generate your vorticity upstream of it with bargeboards but the potential to do that has been removed.

Wouldn't it be better if most of the fences in the front of the floor were straight channeling air into the tunnel while keeping the outer fences turned outwards to create an outwash to seal the tunnel? With proposed fences all directing air to the outside edge of the floor isn't it a worry the current concept of creating low pressure through reduced flow live on? And this large outflow of air again getting sucked back between the rear wheel and diffuser wall creating a lot of turbulence behind?

[base_1000]

Someone has done a render

https://external-preview.redd.it/f1g65L ... 9f8c570482

That's me! Thanks for posting, this was a two week project for me. Here are the other photos: