![]() ![]() Downforce has a drag penalty but no mass penalty. So I too believe that you need extensive aero mapping to find out what's going on.Īvoid wasting enormous amounts of power lugging an extra-heavy car down the straights.I'm not sure if I interpret you correctly here, but the whole point with downforce from wings is that you don't have to lug an extra-heavy car down the straights. Tracelling at different speeds, you can expect it to produce different levels of turbulence, and in different areas. It will be a good one for a wing, without any disturbances, but an F1 car is rather far from a wing profile. Otherwise, I'm with desmo here, the C*v^2 model is an approximation. It is visible as a thin shadow on thewing surface. Sometimes, in favorable lighing conditions you can see the shock along the wing, with the naked eye. There is usually a supersonic "bubble" both above and below the wing. ![]() Today's commercial jet airliners always operate in the transonic regime. Once all parts of the plane are supersonic the aerodynamics are easier to understand.Īs the aircraft nears the speed of sound, it enters a transonic zone where some parts of the plane are travelling supersonic and other parts subsonic, depending on the density of the air surrounding that part of the aircraft. Breaking through the sound barrier isn't a smooth process. ![]() This transonic transition phase causes shock waves to emanate from different parts of the aircraft, and they interact in a way which is most difficult to predict. As the aircraft nears the speed of sound, it enters a transonic zone where some parts of the plane are travelling supersonic and other parts subsonic, depending on the density of the air surrounding that part of the aircraft. In higher pressure zones, for example on the front edge of the wings of an aircraft like the Bell XS-1, the speed of sound is higher. The speed of sound (pressure waves) isn't constant: it depends on the pressure and temperature of the air. At lower speeds, the air retains its elastic properties making such discontinuities impossible. ![]() The supersonic discontinuity is a shock wave, something which only occurs if the source of pressure waves is travelling faster than the waves. I believe that some kind of "discontinuity" occurs at supersonic speeds (just hear me out ) - the Bell XS-1 project had to deal with this while trying to break through the sound barrier. I wonder if it is at all possible to design a surface that deliberately induces some kind of rupture at lower speeds in order to avoid wasting enormous amounts of power lugging an extra-heavy car down the straights. I know that the rules prohibit movement of aero surfaces, but does anyone know if an attempt was made to get around this problem by designing a fixed aero surface that induces a "non-uniform" airflow? By this, I mean that the aero is designed so that as the speed of the car increases, the airflow around the car suffers a kind of "discontinuity", so that instead of generating more and more downforce, the aerodynamics behave in a totally different way (above a certain threshold), reducing downforce. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that downforce is really necessary only at the corners - having an additional 1200kg of mass generating downforce on a straight is a tremendous waste. ![]()
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