Importance of the diffuser?

Here are our CFD links and discussions about aerodynamics, suspension, driver safety and tyres. Please stick to F1 on this forum.
Gecko
Gecko
4
Joined: 05 Sep 2006, 20:40

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

kilcoo316 wrote:
Gecko wrote:That is not entirely correct. Around any kink, the inviscid flow will be accelerated before and also after the kink.
And the physical mechanism for that would be...?

(its an expanding duct here)
It's just the potential flow of an ideal fluid around a kink/large curvature (a solution of the Laplace equation for the velocity potential). E.g. this picture, where the flow is along the dark blue lines and the magnitude of the velocity is given by the inverse distance between the bright blue lines. It's not exactly the situation as in the diffuser but the principle still stands; the flow near the kink is somewhat accelerated both before and after the kink, and this is the phenomenon can also be observed in the CFD flow pictures earlier in this thread where the floor transitions into the diffuser.

guy
guy
0
Joined: 19 Apr 2009, 13:33

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

Hi all!!
Somebody Can gives me the different values of overall downforce in Formula 1 from 80's to present days?

Thanks, and sorry for my bad English.

rob
rob
0
Joined: 28 Jul 2004, 10:16

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

guy wrote:Hi all!!
Somebody Can gives me the different values of overall downforce in Formula 1 from 80's to present days?

Thanks, and sorry for my bad English.
Here is plot of downfore and engine power from year 1965 to 2000.

http://img444.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img3200pi4.jpg

I hope it help you.

guy
guy
0
Joined: 19 Apr 2009, 13:33

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

Thanks a lot!!!

delsando
delsando
0
Joined: 03 Nov 2008, 11:18
Location: Fra

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

http://delsando.deviantart.com/art/Poss ... -120633498

Wanted to whether this was legal/illegal .?
"The danger sensation is exciting, the challenge is to find new dangers." Ayrton Senna

kilcoo316
kilcoo316
21
Joined: 09 Mar 2005, 16:45
Location: Kilcoo, Ireland

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

Gecko wrote:It's just the potential flow of an ideal fluid around a kink/large curvature
Thank you! :)


Constant learning (and re-learning what I really shouldn't forget :oops: ) on here!

kilcoo316
kilcoo316
21
Joined: 09 Mar 2005, 16:45
Location: Kilcoo, Ireland

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

A dissapointing aspect of Bahrain was the lack of improvement of Force India.

I personally expected them to jump far ahead of Ferrari/BMW/STR...

xpensive
xpensive
214
Joined: 22 Nov 2008, 18:06
Location: Somewhere in Scandinavia

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

What I think is happening at this moment, but obviously cannot see, is a ferocious race by the engineers of the grandees to design the ultimate interpretation of the new diffuser rules, all in order to have it in place for Barcelona.

As an engineer, I cannot wait to see what Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, RBR and Renault will come up with in three weeks.

In Ferrari's case, I expect a new car basically?
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"

User avatar
NormanBates
0
Joined: 31 Mar 2009, 00:34

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

kilcoo316 wrote:A dissapointing aspect of Bahrain was the lack of improvement of Force India.

I personally expected them to jump far ahead of Ferrari/BMW/STR...
that surprised me too

I was betting (non-literally) on the top 3 teams from last year (Ferrari+BMW+McLaren) doing horribly bad in Q1 and taking at least four of the last five positions in the grid

I guess FI confirms that sticking a DDD on a car won't necessarily help much
xpensive wrote:What I think is happening at this moment, but obviously cannot see, is a ferocious race by the engineers of the grandees to design the ultimate interpretation of the new diffuser rules, all in order to have it in place for Barcelona.
I don't think so; actually, I think they should be more than happy if they could just copy the design from brawn/toyota/williams and get it working on their cars; they seem so far away from that that thinking about the "ultimate" anything seems just too optimistic (of course, now that I posted this, they will all come to barcelona with the best triple-letter thing since XXX, just to make me look stupid, but anyway...)

timbo
timbo
111
Joined: 22 Oct 2007, 10:14

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

kilcoo316 wrote:A dissapointing aspect of Bahrain was the lack of improvement of Force India.

I personally expected them to jump far ahead of Ferrari/BMW/STR...
Look at BMW. This should be your point of reference.
FI improved, so did others, except BMW.

kilcoo316
kilcoo316
21
Joined: 09 Mar 2005, 16:45
Location: Kilcoo, Ireland

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

timbo wrote:Look at BMW. This should be your point of reference.
FI improved, so did others, except BMW.
Ferrari...

STR...



BMW were crap in China. There was little relative change between them and FI at Bahrain - even though FI had no DDD in China.

timbo
timbo
111
Joined: 22 Oct 2007, 10:14

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

kilcoo316 wrote:Ferrari...

STR...



BMW were crap in China. There was little relative change between them and FI at Bahrain - even though FI had no DDD in China.
Ferrari did some tweaks before China, so they didn't slip too far back. STR were updated to RBR Australia-Malaysia config.
In China Heidfeld managed 11 in quali.
I think FI improved as much as Renault compared to their Australia specs.

xpensive
xpensive
214
Joined: 22 Nov 2008, 18:06
Location: Somewhere in Scandinavia

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

For Norman;
While obviously not having a clue what you do for a living, what the engineer involved should be trained to do, is to keep an open mind to novelties such as the Brawn diffuser and try to understand it to the best of his abilities.

Then the active part, to use whatever resources at hand to capitalize on said novelty. If possible invent something even better, second best is to reverse-engineer and improve, when the last resort being a sheer copy-cat job.

Above is the perfect-world, in a design-office such as my own however, first hurdle is the "not invented by me" reaction.
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"

User avatar
NormanBates
0
Joined: 31 Mar 2009, 00:34

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

hi xpensive

it's pretty obvious I'm not an engineer

I understand that the ultimate goal is to have something better than the others have, but the engineers in F1 are facing pretty tight time constraints: if it can take you 3 months to invent the ultimate difusser, you'd better make a copy of someone else's design, and have it working, in a couple of weeks, maybe even a month, then start working on that much better design, for which some of the work will be already done, plus you'll understand better the advantages and disadvantages of your competitor's design

that's what I'd try to do, anyway (knowing the overoptimism and overconfidence problems that I share with most of humanity, I also know there would be a fat chance that I'd try to go straight for the better design, if I felt I had a chance of getting it working soon... but it's a very risky strategy in any case)

User avatar
Ciro Pabón
106
Joined: 11 May 2005, 00:31

Re: Importance of the diffuser?

Post

Well, everybody that thinks "Is that possible?" is an engineer to me. 8)
Ciro