How much would you pay..?

[StoplightAssassin]

 

Do you wanna know how we got this downforce?

[Learjet45]

img snip

 

Do you wanna know how we got this downforce?

 

Not sure I'm clueless or if that post just made no sense...?

 

If you're asking how we made the downforce, we have front canards, the side pods, rear wing, and rear diffuser. The side pods generate the majority of the downforce. The diffuser serves mostly to help cancel out the natural lift of the car rather than add downforce. The canards help create vortices that flow over the side pods which is somehow beneficial (which I can explain later after my professor explains it to me ) and the rear wing helps add downforce as well.

[SCHM1AN]

I love it. Engineers can be so awkward at times... also, that's the most obnoxious purple suit I've ever seen

 

I don't see the canards you're talking about. Or the rear wing. Or a rear diffuser.

 

Sorry, a rear diffuser doesn't cancel out any lift. That's not how physics work. As an aeronautical engineer, you should know this by now. The diffuser acts to speed up the air rushing underneath the body of the vehicle, and by Bernoulli's law, with an increase in fluid velocity comes a decrease in pressure. The decrease in pressure out the back of the vehicle will help to "suck it down".

 

The only downforce that the sidepods add will be by giving the air rushing over the front wheel a place to push down on. The holes in your side pods will actually increase the frontal drag unless they provide some sort of cooling function for the brakes (or batteries if you're FSAE)

[StoplightAssassin]

Not sure I'm clueless or if that post just made no sense...?

 

batman...joker..."do you wanna know how I got these scars?"...see what I did there. too obscure?

[Learjet45]

I love it. Engineers can be so awkward at times... also, that's the most obnoxious purple suit I've ever seen

 

I don't see the canards you're talking about. Or the rear wing. Or a rear diffuser.

 

Sorry, a rear diffuser doesn't cancel out any lift. That's not how physics work. As an aeronautical engineer, you should know this by now. The diffuser acts to speed up the air rushing underneath the body of the vehicle, and by Bernoulli's law, with an increase in fluid velocity comes a decrease in pressure. The decrease in pressure out the back of the vehicle will help to "suck it down".

 

The only downforce that the sidepods add will be by giving the air rushing over the front wheel a place to push down on. The holes in your side pods will actually increase the frontal drag unless they provide some sort of cooling function for the brakes (or batteries if you're FSAE)

 

I didn't mean that the diffused actually cancels out the lift. The minimal downforce it generates (around 50 lbs) isn't meant to have a significant improvement in downforce the car generates. The 50 lbs is meant to help combat against the natural lift the car produces. I guess I just worded that poorly.

 

The rear wing is mounted extremely low. See the attached picture. Also, that's only the center section of the wing. There are two more sections to be mounted as well. The full wing is I believe 2" shorter than the track width of the car.

 

As mentioned in the notes, the diffuser wasn't mounted to the car and was at the aero table by the main entrance. And the canards haven't been mounted yet (to say there was a time crunch getting the car to look finished would be an extreme understatement).

 

And the air inlets in the front of the sidepods do serve a cooling function. We opted to mount the radiators in the sidepods (1 in each). Well, not so much opted as forced in some ways (I'm not really sure of all the reasons, but it does provide some advantages like helping keep the Cg low). And we are indeed FSAE.

[SCHM1AN]

Gotcha, I was in Formula Hybrid SAE a few years back. Our vehicle looked a little different, but efficiency was the name of the game for us. Cooling the 100 M18 batteries that were donated to us by Milwaukee Tool was quite the task along with designing the sidepods to be structurally sound, electrically insulated, lightweight, and easily accessible. Our vehicle never got into the speeds where aero played a big part, but I do remember my fluids classes well. I definitely remember being up for days to get our vehicle ready for presentation, and some things still weren't ready. It's just the name of the game, I suppose.

 

Have fun and enjoy! Good luck!

[BAC5.2]

What are you doing with the air on the hot side of the radiators? And what about engine/exhaust fairings?

 

And what are those holes/plates where the nosecone hits the foot box?

 

When does the car need to be finished?

[Learjet45]

Well, the setup for the radiator is the air flows in through the inlet, hits the radiator (there's a fan mounted behind each radiator to help draw air through) then exits out the rear. The sidepod isn't closed of beyond the edge of the carbon panel it sits against. As for exhaust, it exits out the side of each sidepod (sort of visible in the 4th picture).

The plates where the nosecone hit the footbox are what the bolts go through to mount the nosecone to the front of the car.

Competition is May 8-11, so it needs to be done ASAP really. We need a few weekends to test before hand and get the car tuned and such.

[BAC5.2]

Interesting.

 

I think you guys will learn a lot about where improvements with your current setup can be made.

 

I can see a few things that you might want to consider for continuing revisions, but I think you guys are probably pretty busy with less than a month to go.