Saribro wrote:
So, Reca: They're not actually sensors, but mounting points for sensors?
I think so.
Look at this pic, zoom of an area of the pic I already posted :
[IMG:150:128]http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/543/th ... ua2.th.jpg[/img]
the black thing is the thermal imaging camera, you can barely see the hole for the lens at the front; the bulge contains the related equipment, just like you can see on the pic posted by Rob W on the orange McLaren (that was the Mp4/20).
That bulge containing the instrument has to be attached to the chassis somehow, so either it’s glued on, or it’s attached via screws/bolts, the latter makes more sense.
You can clearly see three of the four holes on the bulge, the fourth is hidden behind the bargeboard, they have a diamond like disposition in correspondence with the holes on the chassis. The most logical explanation is that these holes are for the screws.
Furthermore the teardrop bulges around the holes visible when the camera isn’t fitted don’t make sense if these holes were for static pressure measurement. I know there are many aerospace engineering students here, they certainly saw at least once a report of experiments to identify the best fillet radius of the hole’s border for static pressure, the inclination of the hole’s axis etc etc all of that is meant to reduce the influence on freestream and get a figure as close as possible to the real value. If you wanted to measure the static pressure of the freestream, first, the hole would be most likely smaller, second you wouldn’t certainly put it on top of a teardrop shaped bulge, the bulge would cause an acceleration and deviation of the flow, not enough to cause a noticeable perturbation to car’s aero, but certainly more than enough to influence the measure of wall’s static pressure and make it useless.
The teardrop shaped bulge makes sense if you think that they needed to increase the thickness of the chassis in that point, and a plausible reason to do it is to give a more “solid” support for the screw; carbon fibre doesn’t like to have holes on it for screws or bolts, when one is needed you have to adopt solutions to reinforce the area and distribute the load.
Tom wrote:
PS Reca, I'm a teenager, if there'd been any undertone comment of biological holes I would have spotted it.
Ok I take it as a confirmation that I’m not an idiot for not having thought about that specific misinterpretation while posting. I’ll try to be even more cautious in the future, still if, you or anybody else, find something in my posts that could sound as an undertone comment please tell me and I’ll take care of it; more likely than not it will be unintentional, it’s already difficult enough to write in a different language that I use here only and make a specific sense, let alone to write something having sense and including intentional undertones.
OT : you once asked the meaning of “scuderia”, but I forgot to reply that one and I remembered it only now reading Russ’ nickname. It means horse stable, particularly while referred to part of castles or estates and typically to valuable horses. It’s evident why it became in Italy a term to identify car’s racing teams. Then “Scuderia” alone became a different term to identify Ferrari, particularly outside Italy.
W.T.F?!
