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

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Originally Posted by Dave Brockman

Urgh! :s

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? :crazy:

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Aircraft operate in clean air, away from the ground away from the influences of the ground and they are designed to primarily operate in one direction, forward with little change in direction laterally and the turning devices ate at the rear of the airstream. Cars operate in contact with the ground, are turned by front wheels directly in the airstream that totally disturbs the airflow aft of the wheels in a very inconsistent manner. Cars turn primarilly mechanically. Aircraft turn totally aerodynamically by mechanically actuating aerodynamic surfaces. Many of the appendages on the cars are to streamline flow around items that cannot be moved or changed due to the regulations, and not necessarily for downforce. Apples and oranges aerodynamically.

Really? how so? You don't see that many flip ups on Le Mans type sports cars which have their wheels and tyres enclosed at the top. And for record breaking cars on the Salt Flats, I don't see any. As I said before, the top of the tyre is moving at twice the velocity of the car. So if the car is moving at, say 150MPH, then the top of the tyres are moving at 300 MPH. Surely, that wide pice of rubber travelling at 300 MPH would have more than minimal effect!

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Originally Posted by nigelred5

Aircraft operate in clean air, away from the ground away from the influences of the ground and they are designed to primarily operate in one direction, forward with little change in direction laterally and the turning devices ate at the rear of the airstream. Cars operate in contact with the ground, are turned by front wheels directly in the airstream that totally disturbs the airflow aft of the wheels in a very inconsistent manner. Cars turn primarilly mechanically. Aircraft turn totally aerodynamically by mechanically actuating aerodynamic surfaces. Many of the appendages on the cars are to streamline flow around items that cannot be moved or changed due to the regulations, and not necessarily for downforce. Apples and oranges aerodynamically.

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Agreed. If one looks at any modern airliner, the shape is very streamlined once the flaps and wheels are retracted. By comparison, an F1 car is ten times worse than a brick outhouse in its streamline shape.

Apples and oranges!!

http://www.grandprix.com/jpeg/phc/pm...tappen2-lg.jpg

http://www.verstappen.nl/picture/tyr...ce/argm007.jpg

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Originally Posted by Valve Bounce

Really? how so? You don't see that many flip ups on Le Mans type sports cars which have their wheels and tyres enclosed at the top.

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There are a number of reasons.

The suspension wishbones and wheels on an F1 (and single seaters) creates incredible amounts of drag. Sportscars run grounds effect and they can streamline the shape, reduce drag and maximise the efficiency of the rear wing.

BTW, whilst we're on the subject, does anyone know why the Peugeot 908 runs a high front nose cone? I'm assuming it's it make efficient use of the front splitter? Sorry a bit off topic, I never got answer on the GT forum.

http://www.motorsport.com/photos/lms...al-xp-0002.jpg

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Originally Posted by Valve Bounce

What I meant to say wass that if the cornering speed was increased by 20%, then the forces which cause damage would be quadrupled. That's what Max claimed.

As for the wierd wings on the Honda, they are Yoda wings. :D

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The foreces that cause damage might not necessarily be quadrupled but the damage caused might be if measured in components broken or monetary cost. Then again the exact answers are available to all the teams through sensors and data logging.

Not only that the faster a car goes round a corner, the less able gravel and tarmac can prevent it hitting something and the less time the drive has to react.

For example say a car leaves the road at 50m/s (180kph) and another at 60m/s (216kph) and a gravel trap slows the car at 2g and maybe the faster one at 2.2g due to higher drag at higher speeds over 100m before hitting a wall. The 50m/s car will slow to 23m/s while the 60m/s will slow to 38m/s.

The kinetic energy the first car has when it hits the wall will therefore be 2.73 times as great. With different (more accurate) numbers this ratio will obviously be different but the point is a 20% difference in speed makes a massive difference.

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Originally Posted by Valve Bounce

OK, after careful re-thinking, it was 10% and not 10 kph. But that meant that if the speed around any corner was doubled, the the damage was quadroupled. And Max came out with some mathematical formulae to prove his point.

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Well, perhaps some light could be shed by the work of a slightly more esteemed Englishman, Sir Isaac Newton. If I remember secondary school physics correctly, E=1/2 M V*2 (sorry, I can't do a superscript, so read that as "V-squared"), where E is enerby, M is mass, and V is velocity.

So the 10% increase in velocity increases energy by 21% (1.1*2) and doubling velocity does indeed quadruple energy (2*2). Now, calculating damage is a different problem, because the relation between energy of a crash and damage is probably not linear - once you hit component failure stresses damage spikes catastrophically.

ClarkFan

P.S. I blame any errors in this formulation on the education system, as produtive learning (secondary school physics) was followed by unproductive (college economics). :p

Clarkfan you are assuming the car does not slow due to friction + drag when it leaves the track. That is where the massive difference in energy comes from as a faster car is travelling faster and has less time to slow down over the same distance.

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Originally Posted by Mikeall

Clarkfan you are assuming the car does not slow due to friction + drag when it leaves the track. That is where the massive difference in energy comes from as a faster car is travelling faster and has less time to slow down over the same distance.

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Sorry to butt in here, but we are actually talking about certain physics formulae Max used to calculate the damage to cars in an accident. Naturally this does not take into account runoff areas, as we can see that some cars can actually come to a stop without hitting anything in a runoff area.

But getting back to the Yoda wings, I think they are cute and look a bit like my chihuahua's ears.

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Originally Posted by Valve Bounce

Sorry to butt in here, but we are actually talking about certain physics formulae Max used to calculate the damage to cars in an accident. Naturally this does not take into account runoff areas, as we can see that some cars can actually come to a stop without hitting anything in a runoff area.

But getting back to the Yoda wings, I think they are cute and look a bit like my chihuahua's ears.

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Fair enough if there was one supplied, but runoff is fundamentally critical to deciding when cars are cornering too quickly and ignoring it would be ridiculous for the FIA and its public face. As far as I can see from my engineers point of view (simplifying everything until it makes sense) the factors affecting damage to a car are the speed it is going, the amount of run off there is, and how much the car is slowed down. At the moment I'm not quite sure about the exact relationship between kinetic energy, work done on a component of the car and damage to the component. However I have an exam on fracture mechanics in the next few days so hopefully I will understand it more soon...