Active aero from 2011?

[Dave B]

Interesting idea...



The FIA is pushing ahead with plans to radically shake up Formula 1’s technical regulations from 2011, by publishing proposals that include the introduction of electronically-controlled moveable wings.

The governing body’s plans are designed to make F1 more road-relevant, environmentally friendly and cost-effective while at the same time improve the spectacle by encouraging overtaking.

Following a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council in Paris on Wednesday, the FIA published a framework document which has been put together to prompt discussion with the teams and manufacturers with the aim of producing a concrete proposal by September.

The most radical aspects of the document concern the chassis regulations.


Full story and details here:
http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=39769

[kalasend]

LOL......i grew up watching a japanese animation called "Cyber Formula". I have a feeling that F1 will get there some day....Oh and the story starts in 2016

[Somebody]

So, they're almost back to the 80s engine rules, albeit with far stricter fuel regs?

[fan-veteran]

I red the article and they must be joking. Movable wings ? - sounds good but it is VERY DANGEROUS and difficult to use. Because on the straights they must be low and on the corners - high. And who will move them - the driver? or a sophisticated electronics?. And the behavior on the corners will differ which will lead to much more spins. But well, if there are only TWO positions of such wings the idea is not so bad.
But what about energy restore systems? - are they joking? What kind of energy restore - a hydraulic pump?, an electric generator???? - this is ridiculous.

We feel that the engine regulations must be changed. And the regulations for engines today are quite contradictory. Why they made them 2.4 liters limited to 19000rpm??? It is nonsense, what reducing of costs if you must redesign the engine? It was far better to limit the old 3L to 18000 rpm for example. I can't propose my own regulations, i don't have an idea, maybe 3L limited to 18000rpm which gives around 820 bhp. But F1 is about technology ,the rivalry between different teams in engineering matters, not only between pilots. So if we have a competition in engineering we will probably have a big money involved. But of course there must be set a limit.

[wmcot]

But what about energy restore systems? - are they joking? What kind of energy restore - a hydraulic pump?, an electric generator????

I suggest they use a really large, heavy flywheel!!! :) That would really be safe???

[ioan]

And the regulations for engines today are quite contradictory. Why they made them 2.4 liters limited to 19000rpm??? It is nonsense, what reducing of costs if you must redesign the engine? It was far better to limit the old 3L to 18000 rpm for example. I can't propose my own regulations, i don't have an idea, maybe 3L limited to 18000rpm which gives around 820 bhp.

Do you believe that the engine changes and more than that the rpm limitation was introduced to reduce costs? It was just a means to create a more artificially leveled field masking everything under the principle of cost cutting!

[wedge]

Seems like the FIA want to keep the manufactuers/constructors sweet.

Restrictive upper body aero regs ie. banning winglets, more emphasis on undercar aero. So instead of aero, the re-introduction of electronic driver aids will be the bastion of innovation in F1. :confused:

[jens]

:laugh:
V4 engines.
:laugh:

I remember that about a year ago I saw a dream, how BMW already prepared for the future and tested such engine. Now it's becoming a truth. :p :

[ioan]

When all this will happen:



Regulations

The best estimates of what these measures will mean in terms of regulations are currently as follows:
• 1.3-1.5 litre, 4-cylinder engine;
• no RPM or boost limit;
• energy flow rate to generate 300kW, including energy recovery from the exhaust;
• 200kW brake energy recovery, front and rear axle;
• 400-600kJ energy return per straight;
• pump-legal bio-fuel;
• FIA specified and supplied undertray and possibly other aerodynamic components;
• 50% 2007 downforce;
• adjustable, regulated wings and cooling;
• automatic downforce adjustment when following another car;
• lap times and top speeds maintained at 2009 levels;
• over 50% reduction in fuel consumed.

Costs

A number of measures to constrain costs are proposed, including:
• standardisation of components;
• homologation of components and assemblies;
• material restrictions;
• extended life of assemblies;
• restrictions on personnel and work at races;
• restrictions on the use of certain facilities (eg wind tunnels).


http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/60207

I'll quit following F1 and watch GP2 or even ChampCar and Nascar races!
I mean everything will be standardized or supplied by the FIA.
The engines will be OK if turbos will be allowed, but even than how much power from a 1.5 liter biofuel (pump legal!) engine? Maybe 500 HP?

It's a joke!

[Mr-914]

What I love is how the FIA makes really complicated rules to solve very simple problems.

1. Cars have difficulty following because of all the aero work. A reasonable answer would be "ban most of the wings". Problem solved. The FIA answer is keep the wings, but have them move. But they can't move all the time, that would make the cars fast. We'll have them move only sometimes when the cars are following. I can see the accidents now from drivers who thought that their wings were up when they went into a corner only to find they had no grip because the wings were down. I hope Max Mosley has to tell some poor widow how that made the race better.

2. Efficiency. Now, I agree with the FIA. F1 cars could be more efficient but just as fast. I don't think that regenerative braking is a bad idea either. However, the FIA is so unsure of its own engineers that they want to give all of these power options to the F1 constuctors and then take it all back by regulating how much regenerated power they can use down a straight? Either allow a technology or ban it. Please, don't ban it sometimes.

3. Bio-fuels. This one is just plain f***ing stupid.

4. Standardizing components. Again, stupid. If the FIA wants to build cars, they should start up a team. If they want to organize racing, they should write clear concise sound rules.

[fan-veteran]

I find all these regulations to be some kind of joke. Really. I can't imagine someone to propose such regulations for F1, maybe for a 'Laboratory World Series', but not F1 :) .

First - engines. 1,5 turbo - in first sight back to 80's , BUT - what means unlimited rpm and boost??? Unlimited rpm will trhrow engines' development in the spiral of the very big expenditures. Unlimited boost - well, it depends upon fuel and if the fuel is pump legal the boost can not be 'unlimited'. It's true that the cost will be down for a 4 cylinder 1,5L turbo engine without rpm limit compared to 3.0L V10 limitless rpm. Well, engine is engine.

But what about the 'brake energy recovery'??? This is the most stupid thing a have heard to be installed in a racing car. That means to have on board some kind of energy storage units, which is nonsense. Not to mention that such a unit can't brake with such effectiveness and such a way like the well known disc brakes. There are two choises - hydraulic pumps, accumulators and motors, and the second - electrical facility. You may develop and even install such devices and even make them to work !! :) , but it looks stupid.

400 to 600kJ return per straight????, To mention - 1 Jaul per second is one Watt. So 600kJ per second is 600 kW. So this energy will give an opportunity to have an extra 100 kW power for 6 seconds. This is almost theory because the devices needed to do this in a racing car will be very ... expensive and i even can't estimate what their weight will be.

Pump legal bio-fuel - what they mean 'bio-fuel'??? The Methanol or Ethanol are bio-fuels in sense that are produced from a bio-mass.

Reducing the downforce is good and not good - it will make cars look slow on the corners.

Adjustible wings - such wings were banned many years ago. It's interresting, but it's dangerous because of the great variation in downforce. To drive such a car will be more difficult. And the time of shifting between say two positions is not a jiff, it may take about half a second. And sure there must be a computer to shift them most the time for the driver to do the best lap times and here is the safety and driving problem. Of course the driver also can shift them but it will complicate the driving. It's interesting but too complicated to be really adopted.

Who needs low fuel consumption??? It's nonsense.

Saving the costs - the same old story. What savings of cost they talk about when the teams will be forced to develop in practise brand new cars, to reorganize all the work???

[wmcot]

Moving wings, energy recovery devices, and high revving turbo-charged 4 cylinder engines - Can you say frequent mechanical retirements????? The more active components on the car, the more it will break (maybe catastrophically! Remember Jochen Rindt taking the wings off his Lotus at Monza to increase the pace?)

[fan-veteran]

Wings with variable angle of attack (i can imagine they mena namely this by 'active aero'). The idea LOOKS good, you may adjust your downforce in some limits and make it not exessive when it is not needed. And such things were banned many years ago, there were such CanAm cars i think. And here the good look ends. In every moment there should be an optimal wing position which gives the best performance - high load on corners and while breaking and while exiting the corner. But how accurately the wings may be adjusted continuosly???, in every fraction of a second?? and how fast?? and a computer must know where the break point is, how fast is the corner, where the corner is and so on, all that making such adjustment VERY complicated and very dangerous. Otherwise all the adjustments of wings must be done by the driver which is impossible!

The big part of the problem is that we want the best possible lap time, so the adjustment must be the best in every fraction of a second during a lap, the pilot must conform with this which puts him in big danger.

Or to summarize - adjustible automatically or manually wings continuosly while racing is a very, very, very complicated and quite dangerous thing and a i can not see a way of adoption. It will be good in theory but the reality is that it is impossible to use because of the enormous complexity (when the goal is the best possible lap time, not only some improvement in performance, in which case there are big difficulties too).

[wmcot]

I think the CanAm cars and the F1 cars of the late '60s had an additional pedal to operate the wing. It would probably be better to have tied the wing in with the brake pedal since you want to increase downforce when cornering. The system the FIA are talking about is much more complicated and would have to use computer control (part of the standard ECU?) since the wings would adjust at different times. Porsche used a dual rear wing at LeMans in the late '60s. The left and right sections operated independently depending on which direction you were turning. I'm not sure how they controlled the wings, but I remember them having problems from time to time with them.

[ClarkFan]

I think the CanAm cars and the F1 cars of the late '60s had an additional pedal to operate the wing. It would probably be better to have tied the wing in with the brake pedal since you want to increase downforce when cornering. The system the FIA are talking about is much more complicated and would have to use computer control (part of the standard ECU?) since the wings would adjust at different times. Porsche used a dual rear wing at LeMans in the late '60s. The left and right sections operated independently depending on which direction you were turning. I'm not sure how they controlled the wings, but I remember them having problems from time to time with them.

I know that the Chaparral Can-Am and Le Mans cars used a pedal to activate the wing. Actually, it was a "dead pedal" where the driver rested his laft foot on the straights which kept the wing in its lower drag configuration. When the driver moved his foot to the brake, the wing went into the high downforce angle. The Chaparrals had automatic transmissions, so the drivers used left foot braking, as they do in F1 today. I'm not sure what the other cars that used movable wings (mainly McLaren and Lolas) or F1 cars used for activation.

In those days, there wasn't a lot of trouble with bad air and following cars. Perhaps that was less of a problem with the high wings in use in the late 1960's. The only safety problem was that the supports for the wings in F1 were fairly flimsy, and broke on both Lotuses in the 1969 Spanish GP, causing nasty accidents. The high, movable wings were banned in F1 before the next race. The Can-Am cars raced the full 1969 season with them, but that was the end. I don't recall any issues with the wings breaking on sports cars, but the FIA has been death on any kind of movable aerodynamic device since, including the Chaparral and Brabham "fan cars" and the Lotus 88.

ClarkFan

P.S. I think that a displacement limit is redundant when you have an energy consumption limit. Just put the energy limit in place and let engine manufacturers figure out whether a small engine with high revs is superior to a larger one (diesel?).

[Valve Bounce]

What worries me is that if there is a car behind looking for a tow down the straight to overtake, it wouldn't take a genius to design a movable device which would greatly affect the front wing's efficiency of the following car, and perhaps destabilise the following car as a result.
We'd have a whole dirty tricks department to design "dirty" wings. :p :

On the more serious and realistic side, the costs of designing and testing such moveable wings would be enormous (as I had already osted) as different circuits might require different moveable wings to maximise downforce in the different corners to minimise lap times.

[ClarkFan]

What worries me is that if there is a car behind looking for a tow down the straight to overtake, it wouldn't take a genius to design a movable device which would greatly affect the front wing's efficiency of the following car, and perhaps destabilise the following car as a result.
We'd have a whole dirty tricks department to design "dirty" wings. :p :

On the more serious and realistic side, the costs of designing and testing such moveable wings would be enormous (as I had already osted) as different circuits might require different moveable wings to maximise downforce in the different corners to minimise lap times.

Perhaps the use of high wings was the reason the cars in the 1960's didn't seem to affect each other. Of course, sophistication in using wings was much lower - getting downforce was an "oh, wow" moment, and using wakes to upset another car was beyond conception.

Valve, don't they have a different aerodynamic suit for each track already? That money is being spent. Now, if the FIA wants to propose one homologated wing set for the whole season, with only attack angles subject to change, that might be an interesting rule.

ClarkFan

[Valve Bounce]

Perhaps the use of high wings was the reason the cars in the 1960's didn't seem to affect each other. Of course, sophistication in using wings was much lower - getting downforce was an "oh, wow" moment, and using wakes to upset another car was beyond conception.

Valve, don't they have a different aerodynamic suit for each track already? That money is being spent. Now, if the FIA wants to propose one homologated wing set for the whole season, with only attack angles subject to change, that might be an interesting rule.

ClarkFan

You're probably right for the big teams, that they would have different sets of wings for different types of circuits.
But with moveable wings, it is possible to maximise the effort for every corner of each circuit, and the whole can be operated by computers for the different tyres used and weather conditions. The number of permutations and combinations possible are just mind boggling, and the cost involved would be unbelievable.

The smaller teams may not have this problem as they simply cannot go and test to that extent. I wouldn't be surprised if Honda did the wing settings for the second Hand Honda Team.