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Seeing those results I think the front splitter is pretty much pointless as it only seems to generate lift.

I've got a concept car in the works that is more like Variantes than this at the front.

Nice to see the first actual result of the season (i haven't received mine yet...).

Those graphs show a massive lack of balance of lift distribution. I think your intentions designing the front end was all about efficiency and feeding the rear end of the car, but apparently you should be more aggressive on front downforce production.

Surprisingly, the diffuser doesn't seem to work as it should, which is strange as it seems nicely designed (at least in most of its parts). In your place i would study the streamlines under there: something major is disturbing diffuser's work (possibly the outer sections, behind the wheels. Possibly the wheels' outwash... Let's see...)

All the rest looks pretty good!

Yeah that's what I was working on, just getting a base that wasn't too fiddly.
I really struggled to get this car finished and legal because of my health getting in the way and thus me losing interest.
On a positive note I spent a lot of time this week on the new concept which I intend to run simulations on and compare with this car and an updated version of this car with some tweaks to the front and the rear quarter.

variante wrote: Surprisingly, the diffuser doesn't seem to work as it should, which is strange as it seems nicely designed (at least in most of its parts). In your place i would study the streamlines under there: something major is disturbing diffuser's work (possibly the outer sections, behind the wheels. Possibly the wheels' outwash... Let's see...)

I had a very similar issue, and it would appear that the outwash from the wheels was massively hampering the diffuser.

I think my issue was starting the diffuser too far forward & the low pressure area inside the diffuser sucking the wheel wake in.

Thats interesting to note crxdave, I might look into different starting points for the diffuser.
Certainly plenty to think about before the next race.

Was really disappointed with the result of the last race, even after Julien re-run the simulation and got a proper figure that raised me a position or two.
Due to that I embarked on a mission to improve the car with a lot of testing. After talking to Julien about AWS with OCCFD and about a week or so of configuration on my side and some minor modifications to the OCCFD installer by Julien we finally got it working with AWS. The great thing about that was it meant I could run several simulations at the same time and get definitive results.

The first concept I lost when I was moving a partition on one of my HDD's and the power in the house tripped causing the data on that drive to become corrupted, despite my best efforts trying to recover the data, whatever I got out of it was corrupt and would not open.
Back to the drawing board.
In the end I had 4 different designs, each with something different but essentially the same design at heart. After all the tests this is what I have gone with for the next race. I have managed to gain 2000n+ downforce for only 400n of drag.



As you can see I took inspiration from Variante's front wing but this is not the only area of inspiration used. The pictures posted by Chris helped me to see where things were not quite right on my first submission. The car has a new front wing (obviously), new front suspension cover, new front wheel pods, new cover for the upper crash structure, new engine cover with different exhaust placement and finally a new diffuser.

There are still things I want to change but time was short because of the data loss, hopefully if they work we will see them for the next race.

Mmmhh...i think i've already seen that car somewhere...mmhh


I will be interesting to see how it will compare against other design philosopies. Also, it would be nice to have your feedback about the performance of those shapes.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

variante wrote: I will be interesting to see how it will compare against other design philosopies. Also, it would be nice to have your feedback about the performance of those shapes.

The slice of your front wing showed me how I needed to changed the airfoils I was planning on using (the concept I lost had a full width front wing but without the upper section like yours). The placement of the airfoils also.

The car isn't as efficient as yours (I believe the main body is a bit fatter on mine as I have used supplied body to an extent which is blocking some of the airflow).

I'm hoping for a place or two improvement in the race results with this iteration though.

Mentioned in the KVRC several days ago that the latest update to the car has been made with the new rules in mind.

Changes for this race include newly profiled front wheel arches/fenders - both ahead and behind the front wheel, new sidepods which are now more LMP style in that the rear of the car is covered u like the previous tinypod design, new cooling outlet, smaller profile engine intake and new cover for upper crash structure.

Between now and the non point scoring race the plan is to remove the front wing and create a front diffuser that works (ie back to what the first spec of the car had but try and get it working properly), further work on the wheel covers/fenders and look at a neater solution to covering the upper crash structure. Also will need to look at improving the diffuser so that I can reduce the rear wing for the low drag races.

Looks good... although the white portion of the sidepod is confusing my eye into believing the sidepod is very wide, but not very long.. however your text above suggests the red area between the main tube and the rear wheel fairings is actually at the same height as the white part... as I've drawn below.. but I still suspect there is something more going on as there definitely looks like there is some separation between the white and red parts (i.e. the blue part in my sketch below should actually be two pieces...?)... intriguing!

Ok, lets clear this up

How your are seeing things is more the route I will be taking from the next race, ie a nice smooth continuous surface on the top of the car but extended from front to back.
For this race there is a gap between the white section and the sidepod.

About that aspect... Coupling the impact structures with the cooling inlet like you did increases drag. Instead, increasing the height of the trailing edge of those structures will decrease the pressure just in front of the inlets, thus decreasing drag (and increasing downforce).

...i know i haven't been clear... Hope you get what i mean anyway...

BTW the car looks good!