2022 Tech : Why Top Speeds Might Get Even Higher - With the Same Engines
How the all-new aero could make some of the fastest F1 cars ever in a straight line
Ground effect is simply a wonderful thing. I can't get enough of it.
It is aerodynamically the most efficient downforce-producing device on the entire 2022 car, and to be fair it's one of the few devices on the car that actually produces downforce, but its benefits don't stop at generating cornering grip - it could theoretically increase top end speed too.
Where the MPHs will be made... From @tgruener
The main function of the ground effect tunnels (or 'venturis', if we want to be fancy) is to turn the car into a giant wing. By sweeping upwards, the tunnels speed up the air and decrease the pressure; so by having higher pressure air on top of the car and lower pressure air underneath the car is forced into the ground, hence 'downforce'.
The interesting part here is the low pressure - once that exits the car it's still a powerful, attached stream of air that fills the area directly behind the car that, now stick with me here, reduces drag significantly.
The important thing to note here is that there's not just one type of drag - you have the 'frontal area' drag which many people are familiar with, in which the force of the air particles colliding with the car slow it down, but there's also something called 'form drag'.
This comes from the flow separation of the air you get at the end of the car; where it goes from smooth, so called 'laminar' flow, to a disturbed mess of turbulent flow. This creates a vacuum behind the car which you can think of like a parachute, pulling the car back instead of pushing it back like frontal area drag.
The exits of the venturis, Via @tgruener
This form drag increases if the trailing edge of the car is less rounded and streamlined, so one way you can cure this is by lowering the rear end to achieve this rounded shape so the air separates less - but that would be problematic for downforce, and anyway there isn't enough space lengthwise in the rules to allow it.
The second way is by injecting some fresh momentum from fast-moving air; which is exactly what ground effect allows us to do. This restores some ordered flow so the air behaves more normally and reduces the parachuting effect, and therefore drag too.
Moreover, when you add the fact that for 2022 there will be a reduction in draggier, overbody downforce elements (and that ground effect is very clean too) then this induced drag will decrease even further.
Could above-210mph speeds become more of a normality? Maybe...
@thomasmaheronf1
Ground effect is, quite simply, a gift that keeps on giving.
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Comments (7)
When I raced sailboards, windsurfing, I very much had to know about laminar flow. You didn't want the water to break up along the bottom of the board. So we wet sanded our boards before races to make sure that it didn't separate and laminar flow was kept intact. This was only true for the big boards. Once you move down to a short board there's so much turbulence that laminar flow could only be maintained along a small area of the bottom of the board. Once up on a full plane the only place where laminar flow was critical was the fin. You cannot have cavitation along the fin or it behaves as if the fin broke off. So laminar flow is a concept with applications beyond just aerodynamics but hydrodynamics is a easy way to learn this principle without expensive wind tunnel time. It's a great way to visualize this concept. Cavitation happens the same way producing the same results in cars. SO if the air flow gets broken up too soon - same as fin. Not a desired outcome. Loss of downforce and lightened rear end will results in spins. Same thing.
That’s such an interesting story wow… it’s funny how aero is important in basically everything that moves at speed.
Laminar flow also came into play with the sail. Was something always on the mind.