F1technical.net

Ive just came up with a slightly whacky idea.

Would the regulations allow you to have the exhaust blown body work from last year, but with a duct from somewhere in the side pod going from there to the EBD bodywork, with the duct passing by the engine to gain a little heat to charge the air so the cars can gain some downforce back?

The car would still have to have the exhaust from the engine in the 2012 posistion to stay in the rules.

But could you have the EBD ducting being ducted from a duct in the side pod aera to try and seal the diffuser and reclaim downforce?

ESPImperium wrote:a duct from somewhere in the side pod going from there to the EBD bodywork, with the duct passing by the engine to gain a little heat to charge the air

Does heating the air actually increase flow?

How rapidly does the this air flow cool?

Brian

Where would you take the supply from? The front of the sidepods is already tightly packaged to give just the air needed for cooling and the maximum for the front of the floor and coke-bottle for downforce production.

You'd also have to think about pipe losses. I wonder if the flow you'd have coming out of the pipe to feed the diffuser might be slower than the free stream air around it because of this. Would heating the air help this? Would cooling the exhaust have any detrimental effect on engine power by increasing back pressure in the exhasut system?

It's an interesting idea but I wonder if it's a bit "perpetual motion"?

I guess having ducts opening close to the diffuser is still permitted, but by not having the high speed flow of exhaust gases there is not much to be gained.

I am not an aerodynamic specialist. But I'm sure the drag would grow up a lot due to force the air to flow through this complicated duct. And the low-energetic flow you would get, wouldn't increment the downforce.

Probably, the Cl/Cd coefficient would go down a lot.