Well, we now have one year of updates to the CCE GP001 (That's still only 5 updates in total)… unfortunately a few of those were "wasted" chasing sufficient cooling flow, but I feel that I now have a decent-ish front wing, so I have some pretty good images showing a "bad" design and a "good-ish" design:
So the upper images show the first front wing, which was really just "thrown together" with no other thought than it looked sort of "wing like". The lower wing is the latest version with 3 elements and designed in accordance with the "Variante Circle Method":-
The original wing has two clear issues: the upper element shows no positive pressure on the upper surface; this is clearly showing that the AoA /camber of that element is too low in comparison to the oncoming flow, conversely the lower surface of both elements are experiencing separation as evidenced by the loss of Cp_tot in a big plume emanating from the lower surface, most likely due to the lower element being at too high an AoA / or the profile too cambered, and since this wing only has two elements it means that there is insufficient injection of "fresh" air from the upper surface, so the wing just stalls badly.
The latest wing solves these problems: a gentle progression of AoA across the elements, a consistant profile camber and injection of fresh air at appropriate points (now two points, due to the three elements), and the result is positive pressure on the upper face of all elements and very little loss of Cp_tot….
The plan (/hope
) for the next race is to get the rear wing to the same level of performance....