Allow wishbone mounted front wings for road car relevance!

[g-force_addict]

You cant even get an F1 car on the road because the front wings would scrape the ground.
Even some "road cars" have horribly long and low front overhangs. The worst being Maserati MC12

So F1 aerodynamics technology development could be applied to road cars by mounting the front wings on the wishbones.
They could even have "biplanes" by having wings on both upper and lower wishbones.

As an added bonus wishbones are semi-unsprung (or semi-sprung depending on how you view it), so wings would generate downforce that won't compress springs to reduce ride height as much as current front wings do.
Also wings height would be pretty much constant, except for tire deflection.

Comments? Ideas?

P.S. Please take it as a nice exercise on aerodynamics and don't get into F1 road-relevance policies arguments.
We had enough arguments.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6058

[Lycoming]

Why would a road car need wings? And why would mounting it to the wishbones give better ground clearance? You can put it on the wishbones and still have it half an inch off the ground. You would want to do so in a racecar to gain from ground effect.

[Just_a_fan]

Simpler solution would be height adjustable suspension to allow the car to be lifted when required.

Downforce on a pure road car is a strange idea anyway. If you lose downforce at any time then you're off the road at silly speeds in to a massive accident. Downforce is only worth having on cars that are likely to see some track time.

I'd prefer to see the development of proper active aero in F1. Road cars have it and it might lead to better racing.

[gixxer_drew]

I never really agreed with the idea that aerodynamics have no place on road cars. What could be more applicable than drastically reduced stopping distances or cars that were stable while hydroplaning and had tons more grip in the rain. As far as aero goes, my blunt opinion is that manufacturers for the most part have their heads in the sand. Especially with low drag stuff. You could do double the km per liter they do now if they stopped designing shapes in board rooms and did it in the wind tunnel.

[Tommy Cookers]

You could do double the km per liter they do now if they stopped designing shapes in board rooms and did it in the wind tunnel.

surely in the real world fuel consumption is dominated by weight, tyre resistance etc ?
(start-stop road conditions are usual, also at typical speeds aero drag is small, mechanical drag (tyres) is substantial)
further reductions in aero drag would be futile, especially if they had the side effect if increasing weight ?
cars are rather heavy these days, the price of safety
a really low drag car could/should have a smaller engine; no-one would buy it

aquaplaning is gets worse with tyre width, so 'performance' tyres are not so clever then
narrower tyres have less (mechanical) drag
(BTW a big benefit of front wheel drive vs rwd is in these conditions)
drag is drag whether aerodynamic or mechanical ('rolling resistance')

improved fuel consumption follows from not buying engines more powerful than needed, so is unpopular
manufacturers already in large part do aero to increase official mpg figures that don't work in the real world
in their rigged context, 'all-electric' vehicles are better at retaining efficiency at partial powers

EDITtoo much of what is often presented as aero 'improvement' works only under artificial conditions
(eg disc wheels in cycle racing give more drag when there is any sidewind, they develop 'lift' like a flying saucer)
(even tension spokes of aero section can similarly increase drag, round section spoke should follow Prandtl)

[xxChrisxx]

I never really agreed with the idea that aerodynamics have no place on road cars. What could be more applicable than drastically reduced stopping distances or cars that were stable while hydroplaning and had tons more grip in the rain. As far as aero goes, my blunt opinion is that manufacturers for the most part have their heads in the sand. Especially with low drag stuff. You could do double the km per liter they do now if they stopped designing shapes in board rooms and did it in the wind tunnel.

As a rough rule of thumb aerodynamics work at 60mph+. Most people use cars to trudge to work in an endless traffic jam, doing not enough speed to get the tacho needle to move.

The primary aim of aerodynamics is to help you go round corners faster. It's actually a bad thing to have in a staight line when accelerating and cruising due to induced drag, so all those people using the motorway will actually be worse off with downforce.

Improved braking is better achieved by banning cheap crap tyres, the same goes for wet weather performance. Cheap tyres without aero loads are already prone to understeer, then when he pleb behind the wheel jumps on the brakes mid corner the back snaps round. This problem will only get worse with increased loading.

Cars in general are now designed with low Cd in mind, you just need to look a the figures. I bet you'll be hard pressed to find a modern car with a Cd over 0.35.

[olefud]

I never really agreed with the idea that aerodynamics have no place on road cars. What could be more applicable than drastically reduced stopping distances or cars that were stable while hydroplaning and had tons more grip in the rain. As far as aero goes, my blunt opinion is that manufacturers for the most part have their heads in the sand. Especially with low drag stuff. You could do double the km per liter they do now if they stopped designing shapes in board rooms and did it in the wind tunnel.

As a rough rule of thumb aerodynamics work at 60mph+. Most people use cars to trudge to work in an endless traffic jam, doing not enough speed to get the tacho needle to move.

The primary aim of aerodynamics is to help you go round corners faster. It's actually a bad thing to have in a staight line when accelerating and cruising due to induced drag, so all those people using the motorway will actually be worse off with downforce.

Improved braking is better achieved by banning cheap crap tyres, the same goes for wet weather performance. Cheap tyres without aero loads are already prone to understeer, then when he pleb behind the wheel jumps on the brakes mid corner the back snaps round. This problem will only get worse with increased loading.

Cars in general are now designed with low Cd in mind, you just need to look a the figures. I bet you'll be hard pressed to find a modern car with a Cd over 0.35.

If you’re a bit selective road car aero makes sense. I have a GT type car and have gone over 1000 miles in a day’s driving. But even doing that big hunker wings wouldn’t make sense. Lowering an inch or so and having a decent spoiler/splitter effectively decreases the frontal area in that the under car shear between the car bottom and road surface is rather high friction. The lower under-car pressure adds a bit of down force while decreasing drag. Same for a well thought out Kamm spoiler on the back

[skgoa]

The entire "road cars aren't designed in the wind tunnel" premise is wrong. Practically every road car on sale nowadays has been tested and (somewhat) optimized for low drag and highspeed stability in a wind tunnel. If you know what you are looking for, you will see certain features on almost all cars. But I guess one shouldn't expect to much from someone who believes car manufacturers have their board members design the cars.

Fake edit: oh wait, the Simpsons did it so it must be true!

[PlatinumZealot]

By green standards a road car doesn't really need down-force so adding wings is not necessary.

A real green car, only needs to go as fast as legal free-way speeds sipping as little fuel as possible. The weight of the car should be enough to give safe grip.

Even then, if you wanted to add down-force for extra safety at 55mph, you wouldn't use wings.

[gixxer_drew]

What would I know, I only do that professionally. I'm sure this board all knows better though

heres how it really works: The artists draw it up, then it goes back and forth with the marketing people. Then they give it to the technical people and say: OK now hit our MPG targets without making any major changes to the shape thats been approved before we even rang you. If your lucky they go to the wind tunnel ... CFD is standard now but you arent going to be allowed to sculpt the shape of say the roofline drastically to reduce drag. It's going to look pretty much like it did when you got it from the artists. Sometimes they will consult you during the design process but they dont put aero guys in charge of the decisions on the shape and at that point there isnt a test program its usually just advising the designers on the shapes for lower drag and they usually wont like how a low drag shape looks and it goes out the window or gets dumbed down.

.28 is the best cars these days but they can be SO much better. You see little glimmers of it here and there like the X prize competition or the Aptera that arent even in the same ballpark as a modern production car as far as drag. Really 0.28 is a quite high number. The reality is that most production cars are designed with aesthetics, marketing, interior volume, all the normal compromises and most of that comes way ahead of aero. Its not unusual at all for most cars to have seen way more tunnel time for wind noise stuff than for all other types of aero. Sorry, thats just the reality of the business.

[Tommy Cookers]

You could do double the km per liter they do now if they stopped designing shapes in board rooms and did it in the wind tunnel.

I think this is what some of us disagree with
even if you had zero aero drag fuel consumption in typical use (certainly in my use) would not be halved

[gixxer_drew]

You could do double the km per liter they do now if they stopped designing shapes in board rooms and did it in the wind tunnel.

I think this is what some of us disagree with
even if you had zero aero drag fuel consumption in typical use (certainly in my use) would not be halved

Why not? rolling drag or engine internal friction? Where are you getting your numbers for that? You know its been done before right? Many times....

[olefud]

You could do double the km per liter they do now if they stopped designing shapes in board rooms and did it in the wind tunnel.

I think this is what some of us disagree with
even if you had zero aero drag fuel consumption in typical use (certainly in my use) would not be halved

Why not? rolling drag or engine internal friction? Where are you getting your numbers for that? You know its been done before right? Many times....

Pushed to the extreme four digit MPG numbers are relatively common. The biggest problem in real life is ½ mass x velocity squared, i.e. the energy needed to get up to speed that is dumped into entropy at the next stop light.

[Tommy Cookers]

@drew
isn't the industry policy consistent with my view ?
you may be sure that their policy is wrong, but they don't think it's wrong ?

[gixxer_drew]

Pushed to the extreme four digit MPG numbers are relatively common. The biggest problem in real life is ½ mass x velocity squared, i.e. the energy needed to get up to speed that is dumped into entropy at the next stop light.

Agreed, thats why you have to start out with a good definition of what defines the efficiency. I would like to inspire some of you to take a look at the winners of the automotive x prize and how they defined it for the competition.