Flo Vis Paint?

[marcush.]

but this is exactly my Point guys-i don not Claim it does not Show the developing Patterns and if things work or not -but it does not give any clue if it is repeatable behaviour -as you can never be even sure if you have applied the vlowis paint as last time ....so nothing in Terms of Validation possible it´s what i would call a random test -which is telling you it worked or did not work in a set of circumstances completely out of your control...very very naive to draw any conclusions from this ...my 2 Cents.

again -hwo many Teams have a handle on their aero always ? Even his masters voice Newey had some recent blind alleys to walk through ..admittedly quicker than others but still I Claim to have a point here.


mind you .cfd is not something Voodoo it is a calculation of flow with a simplified normalised Environment .Testing is done with the tunnel and tools to quantify flows at certain Points and Forces generated.

the flow viz clearly lacks the Connection of flow development capturing and time in the test (when you are already collecting all the vehicle data!) so you are reduced to a somewhat steady state condition but how can you know that yor flow Patterns visible in the pits are a constant out there without Video capturing? all you got is the endresult and maybe some pics from the photogrphers on track...I think if there is something to learn from it then you should do it properly.

this hold true for the earo rakes and things they use as well .... they act as if they had the idea only yesterday of trying to measure flows around the car on track ....it does make sense to integrate These things into the original car design not fix it with duct tape .. when you are looking to Points of a force ......it is a bad idea to modify your Experiment significantly with your testing device... say you measure a Vibration and your sensor is actually damping or exciting the part you want to test.... useless results are a certainty.sometimes you rather think not start your test .creating tons of crap data and results -as in the Moment you come up with a result someone starts to draw conclusions from it ...without respecting the Limits of your test case.

[strad]

...very very naive to draw any conclusions from this ...my 2 Cents.

All the teams do it so you are saying that all these teams are naïve?

[marcush.]

yes that is my Point.
I can state i have used those würth pump bottles in my Workshop already 20 years ago and they are well suited to apply brakecleaner or wheel cleaner but that´s really the end of their useful utilisation .
If you try hard to evaporate 200mill€ per year to campaign two cars at 20 Weekends and rely on tool like that to apply a substance for visualize and validate aero effects developped with multimillion invest and 100s of peoples brain farts it must be allowed to question your sanity .
I do not Claim if it aint expensive it cannot be worth a sh... my Point is for a comarably small invest you could apply flow vis very evenly or you could apply it ver ycontrolled on the fly ...giving you 1000 times more and repeatable Information .
but then i forgot even Godfather of aero Newey also Looks at flowvis artworks Long and intensely .so yes of course all formula 1 Teams do it so it must be the ultimate thing to do .

it´s basically the same with everything temperature measurements formula 1 does perform ...those thermax temeprature strips are nice and handy for quick and dirty guestimates of temperature maxima but you just cannot validate the thermal soundness of your machine applying 100 strips to it .it does not give you a full Picture of what is going on and when but still all Teams fall into the trap of relying very much on those everywhere

[mep]

comeon mep ...you have seen those grid girders /aero rakes they stack on the car to measure flow fields and now you say spraying on a fluid does more harm than sloshing a blotch of fluid on the part and wait how it distributes?
The cars use: 5 or more tV cameras +4 IR cameras for tyre Observation which are positioned in highly developped flow fields .
I do not accept your statements as valid in this context given the integration of camera and spray dispenser is not just a tank tape Job.

Hallo marcush,
The thing is you suggest some kind of mechanism which sprays the fluid on the relevant part of the car just before the car drives along a straight to get only the flow of that section of track. On the same time you want to have a perfect, continuous, repeatable layer of paint. This by itself might be tricky to achieve. But then you also need to have it on parts which are difficult to reach. The construction you need for that will for sure disturb the airflow. Yes the pressure rakes do that too but the difference is that they are located behind the area you investigate. So they do generate a certain blockage but the vortices generated by them only affect the parts located further downstream. A spray mechanism will be located upstream so much worse in terms of disturbance. But it`s not just that. A spray mechanism needs to be mounted, so you are wasting valuable testing time with mounting and demounting of that rig. The more integrated the longer it takes. If you come up with something very integrated you have a manufacturing problem. By the time its designed and manufactured are the parts already outdated.
This shows the difference between F1 and automotive industry thinking. Time is much more limited, quick solutions and workarounds are required in F1. The teams have to focus on much more important problems than how to get the perfect layer of flow vis on the car.
I have the feeling you overestimate the value of the flow vis. It’s for correlation only. You don’t use it to decide for part X or Y. Also it does not show you the complete flow field, only the surface flow. It is done because it is simple and quick to do. Make it complicated and the teams will not do it anymore because there are clearly much more important things to test.

Oh btw.: Don’t you want to question the pressure rigs as well? With the number of sensors used there you get a rather rough resolution of the flow field. Still you can use them to search for the little difference.

[strad]

nice and handy for quick and dirty guestimates

That's all it's for dude

[marcush.]

I´m not prepared to Elaborate much deeper into this .We are basically sharing the same opinion-vlowviz is a quick and dirty test of near zero worth when it Comes to quantifying aero but it might give you a right or false indication of whats going on on track .
My claim is simply :
why spend those millions of € to create development tools and spend thousands of hours to actually develop the cars and let confuse yourself by the application of some questionable fluid application when things are not working as expected-that´s not a process ist a sign of Desperation methinks .
It´s short sighted as well -as everyone and his dog actually knows that neither windtunnel nor calculation (CFD) will provide the accuracy needed in formula 1 -at least over a complete open range of conditions and designs .

as for the aero rakes influence on upstream flows I´m pretty sure it is not allowed to Claim everything in front of the rake is not influenced by it..i´d rather Claim the opposite..as i modify the flow aft of the rake this will as well Change the attractivity of the flow field behind the rake ,leading to a redirection of flows that tried to fill voids in that area which may have grown or disapeared through the introduction of that very rake. so-potentially useless results here.

[Constructr]

The original question wasn't about the technical aspects of the flo-vis, but merely how it was applied.
You never see any pics of it being applied by anyone so I was just curious.

[CBeck113]

I´m not prepared to Elaborate much deeper into this .We are basically sharing the same opinion-vlowviz is a quick and dirty test of near zero worth when it Comes to quantifying aero but it might give you a right or false indication of whats going on on track .
My claim is simply :
why spend those millions of € to create development tools and spend thousands of hours to actually develop the cars and let confuse yourself by the application of some questionable fluid application when things are not working as expected-that´s not a process ist a sign of Desperation methinks .
It´s short sighted as well -as everyone and his dog actually knows that neither windtunnel nor calculation (CFD) will provide the accuracy needed in formula 1 -at least over a complete open range of conditions and designs .

as for the aero rakes influence on upstream flows I´m pretty sure it is not allowed to Claim everything in front of the rake is not influenced by it..i´d rather Claim the opposite..as i modify the flow aft of the rake this will as well Change the attractivity of the flow field behind the rake ,leading to a redirection of flows that tried to fill voids in that area which may have grown or disapeared through the introduction of that very rake. so-potentially useless results here.

I'm gonna disagree with you on both points, just for the fun of it
1) Since Flovis is a viscous fluid, it will not react to small changes, so it gives a general idea of the flow over the element is has been applier to. Since everyone knows this, that is its sole purpose--and it is very cheap and simple =free spot check of the calculations
2) This is true - the measurement devices affect the air in front of them, since they use space and therefore a higher pressure builds up in front of each piece. This effect is easily calculated and removed from the measurements - common practice, since there is no other way.

[riff_raff]

Flo-Vis is simply a slightly improved version of the colored oil droplets engineers placed on the leading edges of aero devices a few years back. Probably OK for a quick-and-easy qualitative assessment of aero configuration changes at the track.

There are already real-time airflow velocity/turbulence visualization techniques being developed for aircraft, and I can imagine they will eventually make their way into F1 when the cost comes down.