IamLegend wrote: ↑Wed Apr 18, 2018 5:37 pm
Maritimer wrote: ↑Wed Apr 18, 2018 4:55 pm
How can teams lose the ability to match simulation to reality year on year? Always just sounds like a cop out to me to save face instead if owning that they dropped the ball. Does CFD change that much every 12 months?
Well I think it's up to the individual to construe what it means, but there is progress from race to race. First race they barely could get out of Q2, in China they got one of the cars to start in P8, ahead of both the Haas,TR and McLaren cars. Barring the opening lap shunts with the lead car starting in the awful option tires, I think both cars were in the position to capture some points. I hope they can resolve the issue with the rear-end grip.
Also remember for this year the car's side pods were reduced in size and as seen from pictures posted on this forum, they seem to have problems with flow separation. When they decreased the sidepods' size, they had to change how the sidepods received the air and how it flowed around and over it. They had to make sure that the air sticks with the contours of the sidpods. Thus they now have to anlayze new CFD data for the new Sidepods to ensure the flow is attached and performance is gained, so different values(data) from 2017. Unfortunately these values weren't matching with reality and due to this irregularity the flow being separated from the sidepod at certain instances was causing turbulent air to flow to the back of the car disrupting the flow around the rear wing, diffuser, suspension arm, top of the floor etc...
By Bahrain they fixed that(Thus better pace), but apparently that was not enough as the new front wing they brought did'nt work. Thus they couldn't continue with the new front wing as an unstable rear end will only become more confusing when the flow coming to it is changed by the new front wing(Thus a new set of data which won't be helpful when you can't fix the old one, which is why they did'nt get any improvements in the first place with the new front wing, cause they realised there is still something wrong with the back end of the car). And so in China they focused on the flow over the top of the diffuser aka the floor which is why they were testing fences to stop the flow from separating from under the sidepods and tweaked the diffuser to help work with the new way in which the air travels through those points.
Vanja #66 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 13, 2018 4:03 pm
Force India tested some fences on Checo's car in P2, they used flow viz as well, but I haven't seen photos of it. This suggests they have some (separation?) issues in coke-bottle area. As they use the same (or similar) diffuser as final-spec in 2017 and they have rear-end issues, these fences are quite suggestive.
Did it work?, not sure as China is never really a great track for Force India but Perez's qualifying pace indicates that they are back in form and the next race is Azerbaijan which really suits this team, so will have to wait and see.