Vanja #66 wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 10:37
Aero departments are largest in F1 teams, and they are split in 4 groups - CFD developers (programmers), CFD users (aerodynamicists), CAD designers (tasked with making perfect surface models for various uses) and wind tunnel operators/model makers. They all work closely together and teams use huge staff number in aero departments to overcome FIA limitations on teraflops - or at least this is my understanding... Those flaps and winglets have in general the same purpose and the same concept is behind all of them - flow control without too much energy dissipation. Wings with flaps and slots are good for this, so that's why you can see airfoils everywhere.
With a large number of CAD designers/modelers you can make a large number of different designs for fast-paced CFD development in a relatively short amount of time. Race car aero - and especially new-era F1 aero - is still very intricate and requires human touch to develop. In my view, we are still far from topology-like computer optimisation of aerodynamic (race) car design...
That's probably accurate.
Newey, for example, is always praised for his hand drawings. Unfortunately the other aerodynamicists aren't as high profile so that we could have people showing us what they do.
In my (very uninformed) opinion, F1 designs are getting more and more restricted, so they know they need a front wing, turning vanes, cascades, tea tray, barge boards and so on, and unless somebody has a revolutionary idea (For example Ferrari's new sidepods), then they probably start with a very basic design within the rules, kind of like the RB13 from the start of the season. From then on it's just seeing where you have flow not doing what you would like, and changing/adding surfaces to try and make them do what you want.
That's a very simplified description, and likely to be all wrong, but that's how I'd imagine they doing it.
