I am an Aerospace engineering student who has completed their undergraduate studies and is working for a year in industry at a finite element simulation company (Structural, not CFD) who has an interest in race car design.
A few weeks ago I decided to undertake a project whereby I would design a F1 car in CAD, with slightly modified regulations to match those anticipated for 2017, and use this as a base to evaluate the changes these regulations will have on the car, and from this point develop the car with the aid of CFD to make it a working design. The CAD model was surprisingly quick to whip up, only taking a week or so with the biggest challenge (so far) being the practise of getting to grips with the CFD software and post-processor. I am going to use the 'one-click CFD' package used by the KVRC teams.
To summarise, my aims:
1/Create a visual interpretation of the 2017 F1 technical regulations
2/Evaluate the effect of such changes
3/Use engineering concepts and computational fluid dynamics to develop this car.
The changes to be made by the FIA have not yet been ratified or publicised, so I've based my changes on which changes are popular judged by what is talked about most in the media, and which are likely to be made on technical grounds. F1 cars are around 8 seconds a lap slower than they were in 2004 (give or take a second or two depending on the circuit). A large part of this difference in lap time is due to changes in engine regulations, with 3.0 litre V10 engines used in 2004 and 1.6 litre V6 turbo power units used today. Other major changes include a change in weight close to around 100kg and massive restrictions on the cars aerodynamically. These aerodynamic changes were implemented progressively by recommendation of the OWG (overtaking working group) with the aim of increasing the number of on track overtakes. The biggest changes came in 2009, where the rear wing was made taller and narrower, the front wing widened to 1.8m and raised and the banning of extreme bodywork on the engine cover and sidepods were introduced. Further changes were made to year on year, making the cars slower and slower.
In 2017 it is hoped that the technical regulations will be amended to decrease lap times by a magnitude of around 5-8 seconds a lap. Here are my proposed changes:
Overall width increased from 1.8m to 2.0m
Wheel diameter increased from 13in to 18in
Tyre diameter increased from 660mm to 720mm
Front Tyre width increased to 350mm
Rear Tyre width increased to 420mm
Floor step reduced from 50mm to 25mm
Rear Wing width increased from 750mm to 1000mm
Rear Wing height reduced from 950mm to 800mm
Rear Diffuser height increased from 125mm to 200mm
Limiting the Front Wing to 2 elements
Reduction in weight from ~700kg to ~620kg
My hope is that these proposed changes will improve lap times by this proposed magnitude on the current iteration of cars. The major gains in lap time will come from increased cornering grip, with the extra mechanical grip from the wider car and large bump in rear downforce. It is hoped that these changes are not severe enough to greatly effect the downforce/grip levels of a car closely following another, so as to not undo the work of the OWG.
Development:
The initial design you see is very simple. This is intentional, with the aim of providing an initial knowledge of how the car behaves. The initial runs will aim on developing the wings and diffuser on the car, before looking in to adding strakes and turning vanes and modifying barge boards to compliment the characteristics of the car. The aim here is not to make radical changes which drastically affect how the car behave, but rather gradually develop areas of the car so that they behave as desired and work together so as to learn from it. My next post will focus on the behaviour of the car and will follow once I am happy that I am running OCCFD properly, until then here's a pretty image showing a streamline with the car.
Planned changes:
My first round of changes will include polishing up the car, by applying radii to where two levels of floor meet, and the addition of a rear crash structure and rear suspension mounting points. From this point onwards I will be happy to focus on development with regards to improving performance.
Thanks for reading.
