1. Australia

[simonb]

Sorry the nose does not move (and now i have to get magic marker off my monitor)

Wing flexes a bit, but within rules.

Listen quietly and you can hear an Italian accent in the complaints that RBR are too fast, so must be cheating

[ramjet]

You can see it minutely flexing if you look at the left hand side of the wing at the lowermost white section and compare it to the suspension and body. I can't see the front camera position move, but you can see the wing move though I wouldn't put it at more than 5mm. Can't imagine it's all the difference in speed from just that but then I'm not an aerodynamicist.

It seems to be counter intuitive though. If you increase the angle of attack of a wing (which is what happens when it flexes down) it increases drag and downforce which is not what you want for straight line speed (unless it gets to the point of stalling). It then rises again as speed lowers which decreases the angle of attack and decreases drag and downforce for a corner. Maybe I've got myself mixed up but when I was flying RC planes and a hang glider, those were the principles.

Anyone that flies planes, step right in here.

[Advantage]

[Bibs]

When the wing is closer to the ground it means that the gap is smaller so the air travels through it faster ie faster air = lower pressure relative to the air passing above the wing - this increases downforce.

[Advantage]

Whitmarsh has said in the past that a 1mm lower nose will equal 1 point of extra downforce.

[Kimbers]

Well that pic looks fairly conclusive Graham.

Hehe. Colin once painted a paper Mache instrument panel and then told them it was fire proof.....of course they tested it and he had to scrap that idea. It saved weight though!

[ramjet]

Ah well that's different to the article above. The article implied the nose cone flexed downward and if it did that then the angle of attack would change as essentially the wing would be rotating back under the car on a minute scale. The pictures show the wing sections flexing downward, so yes it would increase downforce as Bibs says as the gap to the road lessens. I thought there was some rule that defines the wing distance from the ground? Is that a static test or does it involve weight being applied to the wing at rest to measure the flex?

[Advantage]

Yes, the wing does pass all the static load tests. (Although it doesn't appear to be the wing that's flexing here.)

[Simon350S]

They had this flexi wing last year as well, I'm surprised it hasn't either been banned or the other teams adopted it. They've all had plenty of time to copy so I don't understand why they haven't?

Not seen the race which is dissapointing

[Bibs]

I thought there was some rule that defines the wing distance from the ground?

Enjoy

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/sport/regulations/Pages/FIAFormulaOneWorldChampionship.aspx

[yeller77]

Last time I remember someone playing around with flexible aeros, cars were going off Eau Rouge backwards...

[DanR]

These F1 wings are well beyond downforce applications. The designers are now working with vortices, creating and using circulating tubes of air. There's quite a stack of winglets in front of the tyres. These circulating tubes of air have differing areas of resistance. The vortices are studied and used so tyres see low resistance, brake cooling ducts and radiators high etc.

Maybe Adrian Newey has found some way of using an apparent high angle of attack with flex on the straight to have less downforce but as the winglets raise they change the vortices and increase the downforce.

Edited March 29, 2011 by DanR

[Kimbers]

Well Aat least I understood the part of your post that said "Increase the Downforce"....Danny......only those 3 words but that shows an improvement in technical knowledge for me!

[DanR]

LOL Tony, me too. When the other F1 designers can't understand what Newey's doing what hope have we got?

Here's some info to give you an idea of where F1 is heading with the application of vortices to their cars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex

Forget the maths, the pictures and intro gives you the idea.

Edited March 30, 2011 by DanR

[redshift]

From a structural point of view the regulatory definition is that the aero is fixed, rigid does not move.

The test is simply that a maximum amount of deflection is not exceeded at a particular loading.

Two points:

- The test loading specified is nowhere near the loading at race speeds.

- The test is only looking for lateral deflection.

What happens say, if the centre of pressure of the airfoil section was not in the geometrical centre? Under airflow loading the wing would twist in a plane that is orthogonal to the test plane of the loading test.

- It would look just like the photos above under load

- It would pass the FIA load test as that is only looking for lateral deflection, not longitudinal rotation

[Iconic Ride]

All well and good, Pete, but if vorticity is defined as the curl of the fluid velocity, and that vorticity is an approximately conserved quantity of the solenoidal, then it follows that the angular momentum rv is uniform everywhere throughout the flows that impinge on the blade straddles of the tangential velocity vis a vis turbulence associated with the specific variable coefficient of lift employed, contingent upon the amount of air mass rotating at ω radians/sec squared, unlesss, of course, the atmospheric adiabatic lapse rate exceeds the temperature/dewpoint spread on alternate Sundays commensurate with a full moon.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

John

[USAndretti42]

So is the wing tilting and stalling while blocking the air from the diffuser and reducing overall drag?

[Bibs]

Stalling by definition would increase drag, it appears to me that it's increasing it's negative angle of attack and negative lift with it.

[redshift]

Hope this helps.

Coffee has met keyboard rather early this morning.

[wookiecj]

PEBKAC - problem exists between keyboard and chair!

Coffee/keyboard interfacing may be directly proportional to the fancifullness applied to the rationalisation of the situation.

In this instance it may be an invocation of the Reynolds Number which, as you all know, is the dimensionless parameter concerned with the relationship between dynamic pressure and shearing stress, each being derived from density, velocity, dynamic viscosity, characteristic length and kinematic viscosity.

The spetmoles among you will already be aware of the fact that this number changes depending on the laminar, transient or turbulent nature of the fluid, values for which are generally regarded as <2300, 2300<>4000 and >4000 respectively.

Of course the major application of this particular relationship rationale is in pipe theory and unless you regard an F1 car as running in a pipe of air, this line of argument may just have gone down the tubes.

[molemot]

I knew someone would drag the adiabatic lapse rate into this somewhere..... Back when I was defending the nation's frontiers as an Immigration Officer, I would occasionally get a passenger who claimed to be learning to fly on a course for a Commercial Pilot's License. I would always ask them what was the approximate dry adiabatic lapse rate....their mouths would drop open at this weird question at Immigration....any of them who said "about 3 deg C per 1000 feet" had proved that they were, indeed, studying as they claimed....nobody but a pilot would have a clue what I was on about!

[Bibs]

And saturated?

[wookiecj]

I'm very reluctant to take my adiabats out drinking. It only leads to trouble!

[Kimbers]

Yes, the wing does pass all the static load tests. (Although it doesn't appear to be the wing that's flexing here.)

Indeedn Graham

Have they avoided this by having the nose bend under air pressure? Because that pic looks mucho like the nose angle 8is steeper at speed.

[molemot]

Saturated, adiabats are heavier so the climb rate decreases.....

Certainly looks like the nose structure is bending to me....now, that's clever, making something that bends but still passes all the crash tests...I assume that the whole nose cone structure would splinter in a crash, absorbing energy, and the main chassis cell would stay intact...