Ferrari F2012

[Owen.C93]

There's a difference between getting a vortex to work with the downwash of the exhaust halfway along the body work and making the jump to the brake duct fins. Most teams are blowing the brake duct fins now anyway because that's a better way to create low pressure between the wheel and floor than trying to focus it all the way along the floor with a decent amount of energy left. Having said all that I don't believe that Ferrari is one of those teams trying that route.

[bhall]

[...] a bit like taking a running f*&k at a rolling donut to my mind.

=D>

I don't agree with your opinion at all, but that, my friend, is great.

As far as the vortex is concerned, I don't think you can look at the way it's been depicted here and view that as anything more than the essence of the action. There's an aerodynamic reason for the front suspension layout as well as one for the mirrors and the shallow longitudinal indentations on the sidepods, not to mention the effects of the wake from the step in the nose and that from the tires. Taken together, those tiny winglets just add another dimension to shaping air flow over the car.

[Vanja #66]

Great work, amouzouris & Hail22! =D>

Sorry to break up the photo conversation. I've been looking over the pictures and thinking about the newest exhaust solution and the new brake duct fins.

Maybe Ferrari are using the exhaust gas to blow the brake duct fins? They're now much more aerodynamically efficient than before and when you look at the exhaust from the perfect angle you see that while they're pointing in one direction, the metal cups/protection is curved away from where they're pointing.

Now the vortex generators by the mirrors are producing a vortex. Both vorticies are rotating away from the driver(towards brake duct area) on their respective sides. These vorticies along with some downwash from the sidepods. Enough to direct towards BDF's and edge of RWEP's??

Right click>view image
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/8471/f2012flow.jpg
Sorry for the crappy photoshop job. Not sure about this, just thinking out loud. Let me know what you think.

Edit: Original image so you can see without paint how the exhaust points one way, but the cups/protection curve and take the gasses away from inside towards the outside
Original Image

This could be, but my simple gut feeling says that they wanted to find a stable solution, so if some other updates fail, they have something that they know how to work with, if that makes any sense... Curvature of those metal "tongues" doesn't look like it would direct exhaust gasses enough for them to reach brake fins.

However, if this truly is the case, I expect the benefit of it to be much more than 0.2-0.3s...

[Nando]

Looks to me the exhaust was put there to not interfere with anything and to put the exhaust out of the equation of finding out what the problem is with the car.

This is what i think the exhaust gases flow,

[Vanja #66]

With what Nando posted, looks to me like they are using curvature to even-spread the gasses over entire surface of beam-wing...

[Hail22]

With the way the Exhaust housing curves on a slight 10 degree right/left angle respecting as Crucial was alluding to of blowing the "brake ducts".

If you take a closer look at the brake ducts they are one of the most beneficial places to blow hot gases with the aid of the suspension arm as to my view the blowing of hot gases towards the brake ducts can create DF (if it can reach there in the first place) but could also dispurse some inherent drag caused by the Beam wing, Main RW and RD).

This is pure speculation and theory crafting going on inside my mind.

[Cuky]

Looks to me the exhaust was put there to not interfere with anything and to put the exhaust out of the equation of finding out what the problem is with the car.

This is what i think the exhaust gases flow,

Maybe, but that can be the case only when car is at stand still. When you are going 200+ kph airstream passing around the bodywork will for sure move exhaust gasses.

[alogoc]

more and more people suggest Scarbs was wrong and Ferrari blows brake ducts!

[beelsebob]

more and more people suggest Scarbs was wrong and Ferrari blows brake ducts!

Lots of people said that about McLaren and getting the exhaust to the floor too though.

[Hail22]

more and more people suggest Scarbs was wrong and Ferrari blows brake ducts!

You do realise Scarbs is human like us all and makes mistakes right? we may be wrong about the brake duct blowing idea, he may be wrong.

Until a staff member, mechanic, etc from SF comes out saying what direction they're going no one here "definitively" know who is doing what.

However logic points to the brake ducts as due to regulations on aero parts the brake ducts have to my knowledge the most veins, winglets and vents than any other part of the vehicle, even more so its tightly packed thus creating more force once blown through at over 200kph.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

more and more people suggest Scarbs was wrong and Ferrari blows brake ducts!

Mate I'd say Scarbs is right before I am. I said in my original post, I wasn't sure about this and I was basically thinking out loud. Everything is done for a reason and there's no reason to make those metal cups/protectors curve away from the direction the exhaust pipe is aiming. That said, I'm probably wrong. No worries. Was trying to initiate some conversation.
As for the temp sensors, that only means so much. I mean there's a sensor on the floor next to the rear tyre. Again I'm conceding I'm probably wrong. We can move on.

[alogoc]

more and more people suggest Scarbs was wrong and Ferrari blows brake ducts!

Mate I'd say Scarbs is right before I am. I said in my original post, I wasn't sure about this and I was basically thinking out loud. Everything is done for a reason and there's no reason to make those metal cups/protectors curve away from the direction the exhaust pipe is aiming. That said, I'm probably wrong. No worries. Was trying to initiate some conversation.
As for the temp sensors, that only means so much. I mean there's a sensor on the floor next to the rear tyre. Again I'm conceding I'm probably wrong. We can move on.

we will know what Scarbs thinks about it soon!;)

[bhall]

The following is from a research collaboration between Toyota F1 and Stanford University. The objective was to understand air flow around the tires.

"[...] unsteadiness, large-scale separation, and longitudinal vortical structures dominate the turbulent airflow behind the tire. The flow is very unstable and has the tendency to fluctuate from side to side. The results also show that there is a region of separated flow close to the back of the tire where air particles recirculate and travel forward faster than the car moves. Finally, the simulations show that a system of counter-rotating vortices overwhelms the wake of the isolated tire very far downstream."

(Emphasis mine and for no real reason other than the fact that I think it's weird.)

With that in mind, I don't know that the fins on the rear brake ducts are for producing downforce as much as they're in place to act as a sort of shield against the effects of tire wake instability. I think it's pretty obvious that random side-to-side fluctuations of air flow would make directing the exhaust plume next to impossible, especially this year when there may only be a marginal benefit to doing anything with it at all. Therefore it makes sense to try to direct that flow up and away - such as the fins' profiles seem to imply - if you're trying to direct the exhaust plume down and inside.

EDIT: And even though it was only visible in one picture, I still think there's a longitudinal tunnel on top of the diffuser to direct the exhaust plume between the tires and the diffuser. I could very well be wrong, but I'm thinking that perhaps the feature was removed after Alonso's crash, and that's why there's only one picture of it.

[PlatinumZealot]

For the grooves after the exhausts, it may seem like it curves the exhaust away but it doesn't. You can't look at it as if the car is not moving, you have to consider the flows coming off the side pod at racing speed. The exhaust shoots more parallel to the car centre line at racing speed - so the grooves are shaped to manage the exhausts at those speeds.

So yeah, you can see that the exhaust streams blow towards the midpoints of the control arms then to the beam wings at racing speed. The high pressure zones in front of the tyres would want to push the stream inwards more too, so that is another reason why the groove are shaped like that.

[bhall]

Would the radiator vent beneath the exhaust cause a low pressure gradient by which the exhaust gets pulled down to the floor?