Whoo, yeah ground effect sounds like fun. There's something I know a tiny bit about, I think the car is effectively pressed against the ground, rather than sucked. Mind you, I'm a bit more familiar with ground effect going the other way - ever heard of them Russian things, think they were called 'Ekranoplan' or something.. basically almost an aircraft, almost a boat, designed to hover just above the water after getting up to speed. Quite fuel efficient.
Sounds interesting, but like a wing, wouldn't you need quite considerable speed to actually feel anything?
Ahhh right. On the subject of F1, what about having a big fan to suck the car to the ground? Was it Lotus or Tyrrell that had that? I seem to recall there was something about using exhaust gasses for a similar reason, maybe getting the exhaust exit straight upwards to give a bit more 'push' down. And yeah. I don't post in an F1 group but I sure as hell bitch about it down the pub!
Well, ground effect is caused by accelerating the air under the car in a way to produce low pressure, with high pressure on top. So to my mind, it's sucking, but from a physics point of view it's pushing. Like when you suck through a straw what you're doing is lowering the pressure inside the straw so the drink is pushed up it into your mouth, or something like that. Always thought that for most things simply saying they suck suffices though :)
What happened to the plane/ boat things? They seemed to be very promising, but I haven't heard much about them for ages, other than a website I read a year or so ago about an amateur one in Australia or someplace.
Pretty much. If you look at alot of cars they are higher at the back already though. I'd love to build a couple of tunnels and have a nice diffuser on the Triumph, but apart from it costing shedloads and being complicated to design, it would do absolutely sod all at legal speeds, pretty much like anything else, other than maybe a proper ground effect system. But somehow I don't think the local plod would be too happy with me having a sliding ally skirt on either side of the car chewing up any bumps it went over!
A fan takes too much power away from the engine though. I seem to recall it was the infamous "Brabham" fan car. Did incredibly well the very few (2?) times it was allowed to run, but only because it was run on tracks where ultimate grip counted more than power. On a track like Monza it would've been dead last, probably lapped on a qually lap!
There was talk of why the exhausts were being mounted differently on the recent F1 cars, claims being it was anything from extra thrust to downforce through clearing the path of air to the rear wing. I only know the basics of aerodynamics, so haven't a clue what it's really all about, but I've always thoguht there's more could be done with exhausts that just sticking a blower at the top end.
You could of course look at making the whole car create downforce, that's what the group C Le Mans cars used to do (don't know about now, stopped following it so much). They actually had far more grip than an F1 car IIRC, thanks to the airflow being easier to control over the surfaces with closed wheels.
Bitching on a newsgroup is cheaper, and I can do it from the comfort of my own home :) Also no doubt safer when you call someone a total wanker...
Yeah, just using the word 'suck' is easier ;) although as you say in physics terms it's being pushed. The water in a straw is forced into your mouth as the air pressure is higher on the surrounding fluid than it is in the straw - the extra air pressure is pushing down on the liquid and forcing it up the straw. So on a point of pedantry, it's pushing. But, on an even more pedantic thought, you could of course say that since the action used is to suck the air out (creating the lower air pressure), it is actually sucking after all. Who started this?!?
That's the same thing I heard. Not much else. I just thought that massive (was it ten-engined?) Russian monster they made rocked. Wasn't it nicknamed the Caspian sea monster or something?
And I don't think your sliding ally skirt would much like chewing on the bumps either!
Ah yes, that was it. It looked pretty mental. I seem to recall that they hid it the fan with a dustbin lid whilst it was in the pits.
Interesting thought. Any idea how they compare on the track?
That's true, but I find it's easier to win an argument after a few beers. Or at least, *think* you've won an argument. Doesn't even matter if you didn't, because you'd have forgotten all about it in the morning and there wouldn't be some stupid record of your drunken ramblings on Google groups ;)
God, I just imagined a world where you could play back the moments of your life that you'd thought you'd forgotten, with all the clarity of actually being there - and everyone else in the world could have a look too. How depressing.
I'm not convinced. My S60 is bigger than a BMW 3 series and yet weighs less - I think it's poor design and the addition of weight in order to get crash safety - Volvo are doing it clever, others just seem to add more steel. Traction control doesn't add weight to a car with ABS.
Your nice big blown Diesel V8 is gonna be BIG and HEAVY. Lets say it makes 500bhp. You could get the same 500bhp from a MUCH smaller and lighter petrol engine. As a track car, this is all important - it doesn't matter how it drives, and how economical it is The requirements for a track car, are basically the exact opposites of those for a road car - ie, performance at the expense of everything else.
If it can push it at the same pace along the ground, why does it need to be revved? What is this obsession with sky high red lines, they are for bikes and cars with little torque.
Steve is right, it is all dissipated as heat just the same as the coal burnt in a powerstation is 100% dissipated as heat.
The fuel combusts heating the air which expands pushing the piston down the piston and block heat up both from the hot gasses and the friction the engine turns the gear box that heats up due to friction the gear box runs the diff guess what happens to that, the tyres, road, breaks body and surrounding air. You could push a car down a hill you would be transforming the potential energy given by gravity to kinetic energy then as the car rolls to heat energy through friction & sound or the car would just keep rolling for ever, the sound energy heats the air and any solid object in range.
I'm objecting to the "Sales!" d*****ad's lame attempts to describe thermal efficiency as a measurement of how much energy is transformed into motive power and how much is dissipated as heat. Put the car into a calorimeter and measure what happens to the fuel, how much of the calorific value of the fuel ends up as heat? All of it.
Thermal efficiency is the ratio of net work output to the heat input to the engine (the calorific value of the fuel used). Not the measurement of how much fuel produces work and how much fuel is dissipated as heat, because in the case of a vehicle, all the fuel will end up as heat (OK, drive it to the top of a hill and you'll have a small fraction of potential energy, but you'll lose that when you come back down the hill, and compared to the energy input, the PE can be ignored.
Oh god I wish people were as smart as they think they are.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.