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Why does it looks so badly cut at the bottom?

It is not badly designed... it is a very detailed design! I believe the shape at the bottom was designed this way to generate vortex in the sides of the car.

See ya

Im not sure why they are that shape. But those "badly" cut pieces are perpendicular to the bargeboard itself. So when viewed from the front they look like the barge board looks like the letter "L" The horizontal bit is cut into right angles and gives the mipression that it is badly cut. I imagine these horizontal "fins" if you like are there to control the airflow under the car. Why they are so oddly shaped I don't know...but they must have some sort of good effect or Ferrai wouldn't use them.

http://f1.racing-live.com/photos/2004/t ... po_120.jpg

Toyota showed these bottom bargeboard edges last year as shown by their 2004 launch comparison. For '04 they abandoned bargeboards for the Williams/BAR solution.

Don't have access to AutoCad 20xx, otherwise I'd like to take Breher's Mclaren CAD drawing and export to IGES,X_T or some format I could import and then try to mesh it up for some CFD studies (gov't time at work).
-Paul C

I heard Toyota/Williams/BAR use the "axes" in order to prevent too much air from going under the car... just enough enters the radiator ducts through the turning vanes at the wishbones; the axes prevent too much of the air spilling underneath. Kinda like bargeboards, they control air to the radiators, but in a different type of way.

Im thinking the jagged edges on the ferrari allow air to be smoothed out a little more as it hits the bargeboards.

I thought the main reason they are required to have a horizontal section under the bargeboard is for the rules and regulations. As far as I was aware, when viewed from underneath, it has to have a 2d profile so since the bargeboards are curved and not vertical, they have to have that edge. However, it doesn't explain why the shadow plate is stepped.

From an aerodynamic point of view, I am still not sure why it is stepped. My theory is that if the the shadow plate wasn't stepped, then maybe a large streamwise vortex would form because of the air spilliing under the bargeboard. Similar to a delta wing. However, with the stepped edges, help prevent the formation of a vortex because the edge are parallel and normal to the airflow. If this is the case, maybe the air is less disurbed and has a higher velocity to create lower pressure underneath the car.

My guess here would be that it is about the same principle as the shark tooth that sometimes appear on Ferrari's front wing and Williams' rear wings. Those replace the straigh edge to a toothed form, which decreases "air sticking". I mean that air kind of sticks a little to the wing, and thereby generating some drag (be it very small however).
Maybe the same occurs with bargeboards like on the Jag. The air hitting that lower horizontal section may keep sticking a little , while at Ferrari, it's hit suddenly with a part perpendicular on the airflow.

Look at the front wing first (and the shape it is) then look at the shape of the barge board .

You will then see why it is shaped like that. Everything on the Ferrari is working together, e.g if they change their barge board slightly it have to work with the front wing.

sorry to pry up an old thread, but about those jagged edges on the barge board, one theory I've heard was to induce vorticity of the flow past the barge board to maintain a high energy flow through out the travel of the under tray, since a turbulent flow delays flow seperation along a surface....thus making the underbody more effective...

Just read part of an article with Rory Bryne, Ferrari's Cheif Designer, in this months F1 Racing magazine. Apparently the jagged edges allong the bottom of the bargeboards are Vortex Generators. They incude a vortex at their corners and in doing so create what is known as vortex lift...or in this case negative lift (downforce).

I think ferari guys smoked something in order to make those bared boards

x

I thought that a large part of the bargeboards function was to create a 'skirt' of air down the outside of the chassis ('twirling vortex' if you will), while the other bits like 'turning vanes' (spelling?) help direct some air into the pods, and deflect the rest to the outside of the chassis floor, thus helping create a lower pressure are under the floor of the car.

This explanation was given in a book I read (possibly an F1 magazine). I'm trying to hunt it down but now that I think of it, it may have been a 'Racecar Engineering' magazine article.

Just thought I'd add this to the discussion as the popular opinion seems to be that they are there mainly for side pod air control.

Is it no longer the case that they are used to create a vortex down the outside of the floor of the car?

Cliff

I also recall that as far back as 86/87 the Williams cars (FW11/11B) had small 'tabs' just ahead of the cockpit area (attached to the floor of the car) which seemed to be there for vortex generation reasons. They were so small that they seemed to be almost a waste of time, but they kept running them, so they must have been there for some reason.

Probably had them earlier than that, but I recall seeing them and wondering what their purpose was in 1986.

They were shaped a little like those 'axes'.

Cliff

klippe wrote: I also recall that as far back as 86/87 the Williams cars (FW11/11B) had small 'tabs' just ahead of the cockpit area (attached to the floor of the car) which seemed to be there for vortex generation reasons. They were so small that they seemed to be almost a waste of time, but they kept running them, so they must have been there for some reason.

These fins on the Williams and on many different cars in the ‘80s weren’t aero devices, but just “shadow plates” for the mirrors required since 1983 till the moment (1989 ? possibly later) the flat bottom rule : “while viewed from below, any part of the car between the read edge of the front wheel etc, must lie on a flat plane”, was changed in “while viewed from below, any part of the car, bar the rear view mirrors etc...”