F1 in schools Advice

[kingrewt]

Hi, first post after spending a lot of time reading.

I am in a f1 in schools team and we have having some design issues, which maybe some people could help answer.

1. Wheels- should be increase radius to decrease energy required to rotate or decrease to reduce friction
2. Ball bearings are they worth the hassle over a standard axle and if so any advice on where to get them in the UK
3. With the front wing should be trying to direct air around or over the car
4. With the air cannister would you think there would be any advantage angling slightly downwards to increase down force, with a slight friction penalty?

We have most of the original designs done and working on the write ups, except the qualifying is in a fortnight and are tech teacher still hasn't got us any wind tunnel software. So hopefully yous can help

[Jersey Tom]

1. Wheels- should be increase radius to decrease energy required to rotate or decrease to reduce friction

Why would increasing radius decrease "energy required to rotate" ?And why would decreasing radius reduce friction?

[tok-tokkie]

Bearings in UK . http://www.smbbearings.com
Re bearings or plain bushes: read this: http://bocabearings.com/dropin.aspx?f=B ... Clocks.txt

[flynfrog]

Hi, first post after spending a lot of time reading.

I am in a f1 in schools team and we have having some design issues, which maybe some people could help answer.

1. Wheels- should be increase radius to decrease energy required to rotate or decrease to reduce friction
2. Ball bearings are they worth the hassle over a standard axle and if so any advice on where to get them in the UK
3. With the front wing should be trying to direct air around or over the car
4. With the air cannister would you think there would be any advantage angling slightly downwards to increase down force, with a slight friction penalty?

We have most of the original designs done and working on the write ups, except the qualifying is in a fortnight and are tech teacher still hasn't got us any wind tunnel software. So hopefully yous can help

1. I am sure there is a balance point between mass and rolling resistance do some testing to find it.
2. This seems easy enough to test. Try hobby shops that sell rc cars
3. Don't think of it as trying to direct air try to think of it as slipping your car through the air with the least amount of disruption in the air.
4. What do you hope to gain with DF?

[Greg Locock]

There's a tradoeff with wheel diameter. Larg wheels rotate more slowly for a given roadspeed, so they lose less energy in the ball bearings. They also ride more smoothly over bumps, although tha may be hard to quantify. Those are the main reasons why the wheels on a pushbike tend to be large diameter.

Offset against that is the aerodynamic penalty.

All car design consists of compromises, studying these interactions is what makes it interesting.

[Cam]

We have most of the original designs done and working on the write ups, except the qualifying is in a fortnight and are tech teacher still hasn't got us any wind tunnel software. So hopefully yous can help

Awesome. I hope you go well.

Perhaps you could put up some images of car so we can see it and maybe some of the philosophies why you've taken the design direction you're implementing. I'm sure most of the readers here would appreciate that and it could just spark some additional ideas from them (people are very visual creatures).