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I was just thinking, if it makes sense to use cooling fans in order to minimize radiator inlet area.

Do you think that the aerodynamic advantage will compensate the loss of engine power?

Fans powered by KERS?

Fans are only of use when incoming airflow isn't enough to cool the engine, fortunately for that race cars spend the majority of the time at very high speeds. And radiator inlets are as small as could be at the moment, but we do see them shrink sometimes when the teams makes advancements in the cooling system although the difference isn't drastic.

But maybe you then can maybe come up with inlets like this and place them horizontal?

In normal race conditions, cars really don't need fans to get enough air into the radiators. You will also find that the combined inlet surface on that old Jordan Peugeot is not less than what you can find on the sidepods of current F1 cars.

I know though that radiator fans are usually fixed to the cars when they are used for demo displays as the speeds are too low to provide adequate cooling. It allows for the drivers to run the car a little bit longer (but I said this before somewhere).

Can radiator fan (of sufficient size) be used to re-energize the dirty air which come out of the radiator fins and used to produce more downforce at the rear? Right now only the exhaust is used and radiator hot air is kept well clear of the high airflow areas.

Tomba wrote:You will also find that the combined inlet surface on that old Jordan Peugeot is not less than what you can find on the sidepods of current F1 cars.

I actually thought of only one opening of this size.

A car has been already designed with a similar solution: Brabham BT46B; but this car was banned by the Championship after only one race.

its a deliberate choice how much air and how much water/fluidflow ,just how big you choose your cooling surface.

to use a fan for the sake of reducing the cooling duct opening is a two folded sword ....you will introduce a considerable blockage to the duct or even the cooler matrix having a fan drive.
Second: you will need to move a considerable air mass through the rads and that will take a lot of electrical power .
Mind you we are speaking of 600W electrical power for a fan only ever in operation
at lower car speeds in modern cars ...admittedly this is owed mainly to the AC in need of flow at low speed or idle conditions but then with a 12V system (running at 14V) we are well above 40Amps of consumption....thick cables..yes in a unrestricted envelope you may use the highvoltage storage unit but it is a price you pay for an aero benefit.the smaller openings will make the fan draw harder and flow less -axial fans are not suitable to overcome high delta p s and radial blowers who are the right choice for restrictive airpaths are not so good in pushing volumes... hmmm.

How about a bladeless fan? Feed high velocity air to the intake to create lower pressure and draw more air in at low car speed, when the natural flow is high enough at high car speed you can turn whole system off. Would that be efficient?

That air would be sucked from somewhere at the surface of the car, and expelled (re-energized) somewhere at the surface of the car.
I think it would be banned as active aerodynamics, which it would actually be!

I'm talking outside current rules because fans with blades are also illegal at the moment, as far as I know.

Can you give the article forbidding fans?

Here you go:
http://www.fia.com/sport/Regulations/f1regs.html

http://argent.fia.com/web/fia-public.ns ... 6-2011.pdf

Look it up.

Paul wrote:How about a bladeless fan? Feed high velocity air to the intake to create lower pressure and draw more air in at low car speed, when the natural flow is high enough at high car speed you can turn whole system off. Would that be efficient?

If you are talking about that Dyson air multiplier thing, it still has a fan its just hidden and only does part of the work. Efficient but still banned.