Mikey's 2012 F1 concept

[allstaruk08]

for your idea of sucking air up using the sidepods wouldn't you be better off extending the back of the sidepods over the cut out in the floor a little bit?

[wesley123]

That wont work in any possible way.

1. By cutting out a piece opf the floor you are ruining the floot it's downforce
2. The sidepod itself as a wing in this situation will not work. It might create some downforce but it will be less either way, and closer to the center. So overall, even if this solution causes more df it will put the CoP forward by a huge amount
3. Then we have the sidepod wall, it will cause huge drag by itself. Also will the wall cause airflow to bleed under the floor and reduce the floor efficiency even further.
4. The sidepod wall will block the coke bottle and cause drag because of all the air hitting the tire.
5. The podvane is pretty useless since it is originally ment to clear up airflow from the front wheel and send it around the sidepod in a better way. Since there isnt any coke bottle there is nowhere to send the cleaned up airflow to other than towards the rear tire, and create new drag and messy airflow over again.

Apart from that you will create more, much more drag, you will also find a nice reduction in downforce. And part from that, I doubt it is legal;
1. The floor is broken up and not a continuous surface
2. suspension parts can be seen from below the floor

[variante]

Hey Mikey,
awesome model, as usual.

But, in addition to Wesley's observations about CoP and drag, i have a couple more:
First: the "wall" you built is illegal: even thought you can create a huge channel, the rules make it impossible to have a huge output for such channel.
Second: in order to extract some air from under the floor, the end of your sidepods should have way less pressure the the floor itself, which is quite hard to achieve, even with the help of the exhaust. In fact what i would normally expect from that area is about 1atm of pressure.

[MIKEY_!]

some valid points there guys, some responses here, in no particular order:
the floor is not broken up and is one continuous surface (except the trick diffuser which is left over from an old design).
the sidepod wall will only block the coke bottle to a certain extent as the low pressure in that area will pull air inwards past the tire.
pod vane does not serve the usual purpose, it lowers pressure at the mouth of the tunnel towards ambient, improving the expansion ratio and thus downforce generation at the rear.
suspension parts will not be visible below the floor as the floor bumps up against the tire as with a normal design.
the wall might be slipped past the regulations if the tunnel was classified as being an internal part, like the inside of the sidepod, low radius areas are only at the mouth and exit where intakes and cooling outlets are permitted (is there a maximum volume for these exits because that would seriously limit the size of the tunnel exit).
with some quick visual calculations the sidepod tunnel has about a 1:2 expansion ratio which could easily be increased.
certainly the sidepods will generate much more drag than conventional ones due to the wall but they are shorter than other super undercut sidepods (reduction in surface and maybe internal drag). the low pressure area will partly offset the extra surface drag by reducing drag over the gearbox, beam wing and suspension parts which have a huge surface area.
wesley, what do you mean by "cause airflow to bleed under the floor" is this about poor sealing around the edge of the floor? If so i have vortex generators low on the pod vanes to deal with that but they are very hard to see in these poor quality photos

Thanks for the feedback guys, you're really making me think about this. Didn't even think about CoP but yes this design could massively unbalance the car.

[wesley123]

With the sidepod wall there will be airflow bleeding in and out on the lower poart there. LMP's fixed this problem by featuring a horizontal edge on the flllllloor which prevented this airflow spillage.

Even if the floor isnt broken up, everything else will be ruined. First of all, the sidepod itself will ruin airflow to the beam wing(and partially the rear wing). Also the floor will be less effective because of the low pressure area emerging behind the sidepod.

This airflow that would go in between the tire and the edge of the wall will only ruin the rear of the sidepod by sending completely different airflow into that area.

Also because of the lower pressure emerging on top of the floor tire airflow will be much more of a problem.

Massively unbalancing the car is the best case scenario, worst case is a lot, a lot of loss in df and gain in drag.

[MIKEY_!]

First of all, the sidepod itself will ruin airflow to the beam wing(and partially the rear wing). Also the floor will be less effective because of the low pressure area emerging behind the sidepod.

As I've said before I'm relying on poor airflow to the beam wing to reduce drag. The beam wing would primarily become a flow conditioner if it was even included at all.
I'd argue that the low pressure area will increase floor efficiency by extracting more air from under it.

This airflow that would go in between the tire and the edge of the wall will only ruin the rear of the sidepod by sending completely different airflow into that area.

I'm not convinced this different airflow would be such a problem, it doesnt seem that much different from the normal way. It's likely I'm missing something obvious, could you do a diagram to show what you mean by this problem?

[MIKEY_!]

oh wow the winglet in the exhaust duct on the williams looks very similar to stuff i posted last year

[MIKEY_!]

I think I've cracked how to blow the diffuser this year.
http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/1759 ... xhaust.png
This uses the Coanda effect like many exhaust mounts this year however it uses intakes along the lower surface of the mounting (the area the exhaust sticks to because of the coanda effect) this can be sent anywhere on the car, has no bodywork in the exhaust cone and can get a lot more exhaust to where it is needed, since only the gas near the curved lower surface will follow it.

looks like the Williams exhaust channel flap but mine was for the purpose of re-ingesting the gasses since I hadn't heard the technical directive banning re-ingestion at the time

[wesley123]

First of all, the sidepod itself will ruin airflow to the beam wing(and partially the rear wing). Also the floor will be less effective because of the low pressure area emerging behind the sidepod.

As I've said before I'm relying on poor airflow to the beam wing to reduce drag. The beam wing would primarily become a flow conditioner if it was even included at all.
I'd argue that the low pressure area will increase floor efficiency by extracting more air from under it.

Air from the floor that will expand, you are not extracting more air from under it since there isnt any more, you are only destroying the pressure difference and the effect of the diffuser.

Also the beam wing partially serves it's function as an floor enhancer, which you have destroyed by not having an working floor. Also it's effect isnt there if you are sending turbulent airflow towards it. You are cutting a heap of downforce there, for no reason at all.

This airflow that would go in between the tire and the edge of the wall will only ruin the rear of the sidepod by sending completely different airflow into that area.

I'm not convinced this different airflow would be such a problem, it doesnt seem that much different from the normal way. It's likely I'm missing something obvious, could you do a diagram to show what you mean by this problem?

In between the floor and sidepod you got lower pressure, mixed with the low pressure of the floor. Then you are sending high pressure into an area together with tire wake, it would only reduce the function.

Like said, it wouldnt work, and even slight gains that are made are neglected by the downsides.

[MIKEY_!]

I've rebuilt my old exhaust ducting concept from last year since I now believe it to be legal. The exhaust stream is bent downwards by the coanda effect and captured by a duct which takes it to the diffuser edge. Because 're-ingestion' of exhaust gasses is banned by a technical directive there is a (very) small gap in the duct along its length so at no point are the exhaust gasses actually inside the car again.





This system should give better performance by delivering exhaust more reliably and accurately to the diffuser and possibly at higher temperature and velocity than with a regular coanda design. It also cleans up the coke bottle considerably by removing the exhaust plume, bridges, tunnels and other devices that have been added recently.