optimising ground effect

[stan_french]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new F1 fan with little engineering knowledge, however very curious! As I was looking over the regulations for 2022, it seems that a lot of it will be focused on ground effect. I've searched a bit about it, and I believe I understand the basics, but now I'm actually intrigued on how the teams can optimise ground effect? (which I assume will be a major focus for 2022!)

If I understand correctly, with the floor being sealed off on both sides, this forces the air between the car floor and ground to accelerate creating a low pressure zone, which sucks the car to the ground and thus creates downforce.

Bearing in mind the 2022 regulations, how can teams optimise this? What type of underfloor/diffuser size/shape would give what advantages/disadvantages?

Looking forward to hearing some theories!

Best,

[jjn9128]

Welcome. Ground effect is one of those often misused terms - for an F1 car it simply means increasing downforce from closer proximity to the ground. By that definition ground effect has been key in race car design since 1977 and the Lotus 78.

The 2022 floors are interesting. They can shaped more like a duct than the current floors, but the rules are still very tight as to where bodywork is allowed. There's a maximum size of tunnel the teams can produce, but also a minimum tunnel size. The 2022 rules do not actually allow teams to seal the underbody to the ground with skirts like were used between 1977 and 1982 (excluding 1981 when skirts were banned and a minimum ground clearance of 60mm was enforced). The optimization will be the same as now, produce as low a pressure over as big a surface area without stalling the duct or creating some sort of attitude based sensitivity.

[Jolle]

And don't forget all the flimsy bits wherever they are allowed to guide air towards where the floor becomes more effective!

[Just_a_fan]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new F1 fan with little engineering knowledge, however very curious! As I was looking over the regulations for 2022, it seems that a lot of it will be focused on ground effect.

The current cars are ground effect cars. In very simple terms, an aero dynamic device is in ground effect when it is within its chord length of the ground. Chord length is the distance between the leading and trailing edge of an aerodynamic device. So on current cars, the front wing and the floor are both in ground effect. Ground effect increases with the reduction in ride height until a certain point, after which it all goes horribly wring and down force reduces very quickly.

Ideally, one would seal the edges of a ground effect surface which is what was done in the late 70s. Today's cars, and those from 2022, don't have edge sealing so they're not so effective as a sealed floor. But they're still "ground effect".

[NL_Fer]

Ever since they banned active suspension in 1994, chassis engineers are trying to create a passive suspension which acts the same like a active would. It’s function is prevent the chassis to squat, dive and roll under acceleration, braking and cornering. The more stable the chassis, the better the underfloor aero will work.