The wierdest Wings I've seen yet (you never know what comes next)

[dchen]

Urgh!

Here's a question for you.

Formula One cars are the product of a multi-million pound design budget, with some of the sharpest minds in the business working on them, right?

They're designed to be as quick as possible while at the same time generating the maximum downforce in as efficient manner as possible. The airflow over the whole car needs to be efficient to avoid wasting engine power and fuel. The tiniest change could find or lose fractions of a second, which could be the difference between winning a race or staring ruefully up at the podium.

So far so good.

Right.

Commercial airliners are the product of a multi-billion pound design budget, with some of the sharpest minds in the business working on them, right?

They're designed to be as quick as possible while at the same time generating the maximum lift in as efficient manner as possible. The airflow over the whole 'plane needs to be efficient to avoid wasting engine power and fuel. The tiniest change could have a massive impact on the craft's efficiency and running costs, which could be the difference between offering cheap fares and being regarded as envionmentally friendly, or ruefully watching your rival airline steal your passengers.

So, here's the question. Why don't aircraft have all these stupid winglets and flipups all over them?

Commercial airlines are designed not for maximum speed. It is designed to minimize cost per seat, and maximize lift/drag ratio. Commercial airplanes also have alot of control surfaces to allow it to fly at different speed and for the maneuvers they perform. You have got the ailerons, elevator, rudder, trim-tabs, spoilers/airbrake, and flaps. If you notice lately, alot of airplanes now have huge winglets, especially the Boeing 737s.

Race car aerodynamics are very different than airplanes, because they have different aerodynamic purpose. Airplanes are designed to fly at an optimal speed and altitude, or dynamic pressure. Race cars are always in transient state, unless you are racing on ovals. Cars also don't need to worry about fuel mileage that much, so it can afford to carry the extra drag penalties from the small aero devices the cars are carrying. Even if you have a L/D of 0.5, it may still achieve the performance criteria of the race car engineers, because they may have a more powerful engine to overcome that extra drag.

One thing though, those Honda wings are some of the weirdest, yet funniest thing I have ever seen.

[Sleeper]

What next, fishtail shaped rear wing? Now that would be something...

I think A1GP have already got that.
Its boggoling to think that Honda are trying these flow conditioners, which only give a minimul gain, when there car has an inherent handaling problem that will require something far more drastic to be done.

I'm beginning to think that Hondas engineering department is so leaderless that they're running around like headless chickens.

[Easy Drifter]

They developed these things. They tried them. They supposedly don't do a d--m thing. Houston our wind tunnel still is all screwed up!

[ChrisS]

The problem is that all these aero parts might well add performance, but they are damaging the racing. If the 'pinnacle of motorsports' is to be a procession, the order of which is determined by who has the best wind-tunnel then the FIA have got things wrong.

of course you are right, good racing should be the first concern of the FIA

and yes I do think FIA got things wrong

• same grooved tyres for all teams so a team cant get an advantage by using a better griping tyre[/*:mhjls26a]
• Rev limited engines and engine specification freeze, at 19000rpm all engines are relatively close so teams cant get an advantage from their engines.[/*:mhjls26a]
• rear wing elements limited and closely monitored so teams cant get an aerodynamic advantage from their standard wings[/*:mhjls26a]
• coming next year standard ECUs so teams cant get an advantage with better electronics[/*:mhjls26a]

So what does that leave, all these winglets that the teams can freely use to get an advantage

[tinchote]

Commercial airlines are designed not for maximum speed. It is designed to minimize cost per seat, and maximize lift/drag ratio. Commercial airplanes also have alot of control surfaces to allow it to fly at different speed and for the maneuvers they perform. You have got the ailerons, elevator, rudder, trim-tabs, spoilers/airbrake, and flaps. If you notice lately, alot of airplanes now have huge winglets, especially the Boeing 737s.

Race car aerodynamics are very different than airplanes, because they have different aerodynamic purpose. Airplanes are designed to fly at an optimal speed and altitude, or dynamic pressure. Race cars are always in transient state, unless you are racing on ovals. Cars also don't need to worry about fuel mileage that much, so it can afford to carry the extra drag penalties from the small aero devices the cars are carrying. Even if you have a L/D of 0.5, it may still achieve the performance criteria of the race car engineers, because they may have a more powerful engine to overcome that extra drag.

One thing though, those Honda wings are some of the weirdest, yet funniest thing I have ever seen.

That still doesn't explain it, to me. Instead of Dave's example of airliners, you could take competition gliders. In the standard class, for example, the only movable parts they have are the control surfaces, which are only used to change direction/pitch/etc., but have no performance effect. The glider has to be able to circle at slow speeds in thermals with minimum descent, and then glide as fast as possible with the smallest possible glide slope. And still, gliders are really really sleek, no "gadgets" besides winglets.

[dchen]

That still doesn't explain it, to me. Instead of Dave's example of airliners, you could take competition gliders. In the standard class, for example, the only movable parts they have are the control surfaces, which are only used to change direction/pitch/etc., but have no performance effect. The glider has to be able to circle at slow speeds in thermals with minimum descent, and then glide as fast as possible with the smallest possible glide slope. And still, gliders are really really sleek, no "gadgets" besides winglets.

Your last couple of sentences pretty much answered your question. The primary aerodynamic characteristic engineers seek for airplane is high lift and low drag. The goal is to take almost all the drag out, while maximizing the lift. If I remember correctly, most of the drag from gliders and commercial jets come from viscous drag, which is the drag due to the boundary layer, created by the viscousity of fluid (air in this case) interacting with a no-slip boundary. The form drag by the cross section of the planes is very minimal compare to overall drag value. It's reason why airplane look so "clean".

A F1's goal is to achieve the best handling, not necessary the car with least amount of drag. To do this, you can use many of these small aero devices to control flow, either to divert flow over the tires, or to control the flows to the rear wing. These devices changes the flow characteristics, but they also introduce drag. The goal is to maximize the downforce while maintaining the correct center of pressure so the car will work correctly. That's very far from the aerodynamic goal of airplane, which is to achieve the highest L/D along with keeping the center of pressure near the center of gravity.

Bottom line is, airplane is looking for the most efficient aerodynamic design, and F1 is looking for the best handling design, efficient or not.

[TMorel]

What I dont get though is wouldnt they have run these extra winglets on a computer simulator or maybe a scale model.
I'd have thought they'd have known they were going to be pants and give no advantage before they got to actually trying them on the track.

[Hawkmoon]

I think you can stick a fork in Honda, they're done. If the best they can think of to make the car better is to stick elephant ears on the nose then they have no hope.

This looks like a deperate reach by a design team who have no idea what is wrong with their car.

Button should go down and see if Super Aguri need a Friday driver and Barrichello should be looking at Retirement Villages in Brazil becuase Honda are going nowhere fast.

[Gannex]

What I dont get though is wouldnt they have run these extra winglets on a computer simulator or maybe a scale model.
I'd have thought they'd have known they were going to be pants and give no advantage before they got to actually trying them on the track.

TMorel, wind-tunnels have a very important limitation, which is that they cannot tell you how a design will behave while accelerating. They are wonderful for analysing aerodynamic performance in a steady state, but almost useless if you want to understand the car's reaction to abrupt change. Honda's problem is instability under braking, and you can't reproduce that kind of problem in a wind-tunnel.

[jazzwolf]

Long live DUMBO!!!! The quickest flying elephant!!!!

Is Honda the new flying elephant?