Fellows, as far as I know, aerodynamically, the correct design of a front wing and nose combo is the one seen on cars like this:




Having low front wing and nose is better for downforce, isn't it? Aero experts, please help(scarbs and etc).

What was/is the point of having noses like this? :


How does it makes the car safer?

Or, if it doesn't makes the cars safer or improve aerodynamics, why do we have regulations that leads to suchs things as this absolutely ridiculous atrocities that we have seen the last few days?

There isn't a safety problem with low noses, the problem was with the high ones.

Nope, not aerodynamically better, you want to have a) good flow under the car b) a long, uninterupted wing c) not tu much things close to the ground because of higher drag.

quite opposite, high monocoque is better, in general with flat/stepped bottom at least.
front wing of course better to be as close to the ground as possible.


point was to lower the tip of the nose so that the nose poses less threat in case of crashing or T-boning, but bulkhead height remains the same, hence the stepped nose, to make under-the-nose space as big as possible.

a lot of GTP series also have flat bottoms but still they put every part of the car as close to the ground as possible.

As far as I know, this high monocoques and noses are given by regulation and the monocoques and noses close to the ground give more downforce but FIA wanted to decrease downforce after Imola 94 and kind of implemanted rules for the high noses of today.

Muramasa, are you aerodynamicist? Because I really suspect the low noses/monocoques are better for downforce.

You're wrong about this. Have a look at a number of 1995 cars and you'll still see some very low noses (Ferrari, Jordan).
It was Benetton who introduced the higher nose by 1992/1993 and especially after their success in 1994 everybody started to copy them.

I think current shape of noses is defined by 2008 findings of overtaking group who tried to figure out why excactly F1 cars are unable to follow one another in anything resambling a corner, and that's what regulations are based at, not safety issuses.



As for the 2012 noses, Lord have mercy.

But cars with low noses also result in safety problems.

Low noses severely reduce the amount of air that goes under the car and towards the diffuser.

There were no regulations mandating high noses.


Tyrrell introduced the high nose in 1990.


The overtaking group findings influenced the wing, but not the nose.

The higher nose (introduced by Tyrrel if memory serves me as correctly stated above) created a whole new trend on channeling air to the diffuser.

In the first moment, the front wings where still low. The FIA started raising the wing in an attempt to reduce downforce breaking the coupling between the wing and the floor. And the noses kept going higher, the wings also, feeding more air into the diffuser - which works on ground force.

The result was cars that would get very nose happy following close, since the front wing DF would deteriorate much faster than the diffuser's and rear wing's DF.

The we have seen two interactions of bs spit by the OWG trying to bring the DF balance back, but every time the diffuser kept going stronger and stronger. First the double deckers now the blowed ones.

This idiotic move now with the nose I'm still not sure is really intended at security. If it is, it fails miserably since the nose still hits a tyre above 3/4 it's diameter and will be slinged to the sky anyway. If it was intending at choking the diffuser we already saw it missed also, the teams took the unexpected path and Ferrari has an even bigger free area below the nose.And I guess the use off thee pull rod is is aimed at the diffuser also.

There is nothing wrong with a low nose and I guess If they just pushed a full flat floor - no diffuser, all this mess would be fixed.

Now it's like one bad plastic surgery on top of another. But they could just scratch every thing and start again from the 80's.

I think high noses became used because of the regulations after Imola 94 which raised the monocoque height. You need to implement high nose in order to not have lift in the front with a low nose and higher monocoque combination, isn't it?


The less air you have under the car, the better. The maximum downforce for a car would be by generating vacuum under the car.

In late 80's and early 90's, the restrictions to the air entering the underbody were already in the front wing/nose section, creating very low pressure under the car and the athmosphere "crushes the car to the ground"

I once heard from an aero expert that this high noses of F1 cars are only effective because of the regulations, if they had less restrictive regulations, the proper nose would be a low one.

I hope Scarbs or some aerodynamicist enter this thread and clear this up.

A basic understanding of aerodynamics is not that difficult to gain if you have access to a good Uni liberay and quite some good websites explain basic concepts.

Anyway a modern F1 car is shaped of course by the regs, but a higher nose has become the standard because it allows to direct more air into the diffusor, feeding it mostly from under the floor. The airflow gets accelerated, pressure lessens under the car and at last the controlled outflow through the diffusor a lot of downforce is achieved. For the same reason the top teams, lead by Red Bull blew the hot exhaust gasses into the diffusor from as low and close as possible.

Of course flexible skirts, a fully active suspension and shapeable ground floor, fans etc, etc would all help to reduce air pressure under the chassis and increase cornering speeds a lot. This is why they were banned.

As a mere mortal that has no understanding of aero I ask, if low noses are not banned (as we have seen in this year's Maca) would teams not use them if they were more effective?

For me it's simply a question of «working», engineers and designers are following this trend because it works, the same way sharkfins were in use, someone had the idea, others saw it actually worked and did the same, it goes on for double difusers, blown difusers, F-Duct etc etc.

Wasnt this one of the reasons that got the Lotus 88 banned? The fear that Colin could make it work and throw all then current designs into oblivion?

Personally I too like low noses, I too find the «step noses» weird and clunky, but hey, 3 out of 4 teams think it works well, and last time I looked you scored no points for the best looking car in the championship.

For Dummies there was a BBC series called Gentlemen lift your skirts dealing with Ground effect cars. It might be viewable on the usual sites, links might be unwise.

No, as has been pointed out several times already Tyrrell introduced their high nose before 94 and other teams followed. There was no regulation mandating the height of the nose. Regarding Imola you're probably getting mixed up with high cockpit sides.

The trend has always been for higher and higher noses to the point of sacrificing suspension geometry, like twin keel and so on. That should give you an idea how much of an advantage there is, that teams are willing to sacrifice some mechanical grip to raise the nose further.



No, airflow needs to be managed around the sidepods and maximised under the chassis to enable the diffuser to work properly. The airflow is best guided in the space under the nose with turning vanes and so on rather than having a solid nose. Also if you have a high nose, your front wing span is much wider because of the additional central section. Although the central section these days is flat previously this area also produced downforce.



With all due respect I don't think they'll bother. Every poster here has said the same thing. Having a high nose helps increase the level of downforce. A lot of the reasoning why is in the public domain, maybe if you look around scarbs website you will find the relevant article.

The FIA Technical Regulations specify a maximum height for the nose of an F1 car not a minimum. The relevant regulation is 3.7.9, which states: "No bodywork situated more than 1950mm forward of rear face of the cockpit entry template may be more than 550mm above the reference plane."

This regulation, which is new for 2012, was introduced because of concerns that the noses of cars were becoming so high that there was a risk that, in a T-bone crash, the nose of one car might hit a driver above the cockpit side protection.

There is therefore nothing to prevent teams adopting low noses a la early 90s - but aerodynamically it is better to have more air being channeled to the rear diffuser than is possible with a low nose.

No, it's the complete opposite to that. High noses are used purely for aerodynamics, basically to help channel as much air as possible to the diffuser. The modern nose itself generates very little downforce, the old low noses with flat bottoms would actually generate some downforce themselves, but the downside is that they deflect the air up and to the sides rather than along the body.


Again, it's the other way round. They try and get as much air as possible under the car and to the diffuser, as the faster the air moves the lower the pressure under the car. This is called the Bernoulli Principle if you want to look into it. A quick demonstration of this can be done with two sheets of paper held vertically like this


and you blow between them. As you are blowing air into the gap you might think the sheets of paper would be blown apart, but they come together because when you are blowing the air moves faster which generates a lower pressure to suck the sheets together.
Aircraft wings work the same way, as the bottom of a wing is fairly flat and the upper surface is more curved, when the air is split at the front it the air pushed up has to speed up over the top to join up with the slower air going under the wing. The faster air going over the top sucks the wing upwards to lift the wing.

F1 cars are designed to get as much air under the car as possible as the more air you have to be pushed under the car, the faster the air has to move under the car to get out the back, so the more the car is sucked down by the lower pressure. Remember the whole point of the under body exhausts were to get more faster moving air under there to keep it moving, the point of off throttle blowing was to help push even more air under the car as well as generate vortices that acted as skirts to keep the air under there.

That was I nice example, well done!

Of course.

Merely a matter of different thinking... Just like in the 1930s - 1950s minimizing drag was objective of aerodynamics - an engineer thinking of sitcking huge draggy barn doors on the rear would lead to being promptly fired by Enzo's team or Mercedes or any of other teams!!

The solutions like high nose, tea tray etc all work together. At the expense of bad COG, poor driver comfort etc etc. Previously teams would prefer the advantages of low nose, pull rod front.

The high-nose obviously was not "universally better" as Ferrari in fact dumped it and went back to the low nose. So certainly some development needed to make it effective, as with all solutions on F1 car.

As techspeed says, the volume flow rate needs to be thought of, not just the pressure.

Yes.

But a high nose is the correct design of the diffuser.;)

That's where you are getting mixed up... an F1 car is a package, not individual bits. Sure, the actual downforce comes directly from the rear wing and diffuser, but not performance.

Not to go off topic, but that's not really how wings work. This is known as the "equal transit time fallacy."

I know Tyrrel introduced it before, the thing is that you are all missing my point.

I think(not sure)regulations raised the place where the driver seats(cockpit) which forces teams to raise the nose as well because if you have low a nose and higher place where the driver seats combination like this:

you have lift in the front part of the car.

I think teams can't put nose as low as possible because they can't put cockpit as low as possible and the place where the driver seats needs to be some distance from the ground regulated by FIA. In my mind, the higher noses are/were a consequence of the mandatory(which I assuming it is) higher cockpits.

About the bold part, that is true. In 2000's teams were using central section to generate downforce with flaps there. There you pointed out a genuine advantadge.



This is a widespread info in the internet : "feeding more air to the diffuser". The thing is that most people don't even know(and I'm not saying I do) what the diffuser really does and how it help to create downforce.

I once read some article, somewhere, that diffusers didn't create downforce at all but were there only to help channel the flow, under the car, towards outside, or to put in another words: guide the flow outside the car in a organized way.


I already knew this examples of blowing papers and etc, and I know about Bernouli principle for some 10 years. It's not about getting more air to the "channel/tunnel" or diffuser in the back of the car but to accelerate the air.

The air with more speed makes less pressure in an object and they try to accelerate the air under the car as much as possible, contrary to an airplain which is made to accelerate air that goes upper the wing.

Every single motorsport category with less restriction than F1 tries to seal the under part as much as possible, rather it's GTP cars or merely GT ones. Feeding more air to the underside is a misconcept(I think), the important is to make the air, that flows there, goes quicker.

The underlined part is a misconception and is occured because of the wrong premisse that you claimed and which was already pointed out by CSquared.

The blown diffuser is effective merely because it accelerates air under the car. But accelerating air and feeding more air are 2 things that you are relating but that is not the case.

exactly.

Anyway, all prototype cars which are designed with more freedom don't follow this "feed more air to the diffuser" principle which was so much mentioned here.

Toyota Eagle MKIII generated around 5000kg of downforce at 320kmh, which is much more than any F1 ever came close to. Still, they didn't have an "opening" in the front(as the current high noses are) to "give more air to the diffuser".

I may be wrong about this, but I seem to remember something along these lines: when the regulations about cockpit surrounds came into effect in 1996, they stated where the surrounds should go based on some line from the driver's feet to his head. Most teams tilted the driver back, raising his feet, to get that line and the surrounds lower. (Ferrari, most obviously, did not.) If that's correct, then one could say it's a side effect of a safety regulation that prohibits teams from having low noses. If they put the driver's feet down low, they have to have a big, non-aerodynamic cockpit surround like the Ferrari F310.

The Eagle had ground effects.

A classic low nose is banned ATM afaik. The cars must fit neatly into the FIA boxes. There IS a minimum height, so an Indycar style nose is not permitted. I reckon they ought to mandate it though, surely a simple way to slash downforce? Then could bring back the wide track to compensate with more mech grip. (And put normal size wings on it too!)

cockpit/monocoque got higher and higher because of aero advancement, not by FIA regs. At least that's the way things have developed.




diffuser needs certain amount of airflow at upperside of diffuser, not just between the ground, as well to work properly. Upper airflow help pull out the air from underside of diffuser, and also prevents the air from stall. That's why teams are trying hard now to guide more airflow to upper diffuser by making rear end bodywork as narrow as possible. High nose is to guide more air to underbody AND to feed upper side of diffuser.
Until 90s, diffuser area design was based on coke bottle theory which is quite different one from the current concept.




That's because those cars dont have big enough diffuser, or no clear space on the upper side of diffuser, i think.
you cannot just attach massive, and/or steeper, diffuser at the back and simply expect it to work and produce more downforce. Volume of air guided to diffuser and the amount of air the diffuser can pull out have to be in balance. Diffuser cannot suck more air than it can spill out. So, if you can have only small diffuser or no diffuser at all, you dont want to guide much air to under the car, because the small diffuser cannot suck out the air and the car would get unstable and at worst "take off" more easily. On the other hand, if you put massive diffuser without any thought, the diffuser would stall, causing drag, making the car extremely unstable at higher speed, etc
All this is about current flat/stepped bottom cars, so things get quite different for ground effect car, altho of course basic principle is the same.

yeah, I think that's the case.

Once I read an Indy car fan bashing F1 cars for having high nose because according to him(who if I remember correctly was an aero engineer) the high noses are not a better development for downforce, they are indirectly forced by FIA regulations.


All forms of generating downforce under the car can be called "ground effect". Diffuser, splitters used in todays cars are all part of "ground effect".

I just read in one of Scarbs articles:
"However, the greater height beneath the nose does produce increased potential to drive airflow to the leading edge of the sidepods for more downforce."

Scarbs is great and everything but I think he's wrong on this point.

The air in direction of the sidepods doesn't even come from under the nose, which is in the middle of the car. The air in the direction of the sidepods are the ones which passes the front wing flaps. The air under the nose reach the splitter, though. But if nose and cockpit could all be close to the ground, they could work as splitter and the underbody effect would start more forward in the car and with greater area which implies more downforce.




Just what I think, cheers.

Well, I think I heard in one of the 95/96 qualifyings that I was watching some weeks ago that FIA had raised cockpits to improve driver safety or something like that.


that's some serious valid points that you are bringing which I didn't know and which seems plausible. The bold part was very usefull for me because I couldn't understand why teams were so obsessed with thin rear bodywork.

also, could you say a bit more about the "coke bottle theory", please? I looked for it on google but couldn't find anything usefull.

Again, nice explanation

Are you an aerodynamicist?

PS: check the pics on my previous post

The 2012 nose and bulkhead regulations are only an initial step. In the coming years noses will be mandated to become lower for safety and visibility issues. The upper radii on the front bulkhead will also become smaller and the front bulkhead will probably get further lowered. But the general aero configuration is supposed to be relatively stable until 2015. Initially a working group at the FiA proposed to introduce new aero concepts like ground effect with tunnels for 2013 but the teams in their majority did not want to change the engine formula and the aero config at the same time.

I can't really add much to murasama's (Edit: and techspeed's) points because they're correct.






What it was was the cockpit head protection was raised. Only Williams and Jordan in 1996 thought to lie the driver back slightly and reduce the overall height. But this doesn't really affect the bit where the driver's feet is. He's just more stretched out. Compare the Williams and Benetton from 1996. The front of the monocoque is similar height but the driver is lower in the Williams. In 1997 most teams had adopted the more "lay-down" driving position. None of this has much to do with the height of the nose because that has to do with feeding air under the car as murasama has explained.



It doesn't matter does it? What he says is right so whether he works in F1 or is just an interested fan or anywhere in between he still knows the relevant information.

Take a look at the FW14B from 1992



You will see that even with the nose being attached directly to the wing, behind it the floor was already no longer flat. Engineers had already worked out that the best overall package involved lifting the nose to allow better air flow under the car and even to the barge boards.

There is a helpful explanation of F1 underfloor aerodynamics and diffusers here: http://www.atlasf1.com/2000/feb16/gray.html

Tyrrell introduced the raised nose with two anhedral front wings; Benetton introduced the first "high" nose that was connected to the continuous single front wing with two vertical pillars, which is the basic blueprint upon which the design of every team is now based.

In fact it is useful to step back and to appreciate how high even the 'low' nose of the MP4-27 is compared to many cars of the last twenty years. The whole front section ahead of the pilots has become much more slender and tightly packed, allowing for much more airflow under it. So the distance from the ground from the 'floor' of the nose section has increased in general possibly even much more then the height of the nose....

Yes, the raised cockpit SIDES, the shoulder bolsters that most differentiate modern F1 cars from their pre-Imola 94 brethren, you know, the ones the drivers complain limits their vision.



The coke bottle principle is better known as 'Area rule' and is for reducing drag and is not related to diffuser function or increasing downforce.

According to this principle the cross-sectional area of the machine should not undergo sudden changes as you go along the body and the optimum shape is like a cigar with pointed ends.

Its called the coke bottle principle because the first products of this thinking, the US 'century' fighters like the F-102, 104 and 106 all had 'waists' in their bodies to compensate for the increased cross-sectional area devoted to the wings at that part. The resultant shape of the fuselage was most easily described as a Coke bottle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eclipse_...from_tanker.jpg

BTW your comment that scarbs is wrong about airflow from under the nose going to the sidepods is in fact incorrect.

Most of the airflow under the nose ends up being swept aside along the sidepods. Only a small amount ends up going under the chassis. To see this, you should take a look at a toy F1 car from the mid-2000s. The complicated turning vanes and bargeboards under the nose and beside the sidepod are clearly placed and shaped to turn the air under the nose around the sidepods. If airflow is managed correctly in this area the sidepods can generate downforce and even further backwards assist in the extraction of exhaust and cooling air from the engine.

I'd check out Amphicar's link btw, which offers a great insight into many aspects of F1 car design. Thanks for the link!

It is from 2000, but it fits neatly the point I made above about the raised nose section as a whole:



Note that the trend of the high nose 'tip' has become more clear and also extreme in recent years, promting to the rule change for safety reasons. The trend towards a higher nose 'stem' continues with cars like the new Ferrari.

Here is Martin Brundle's F1 aerodynamics 101 class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYaIXWNOa_A

yea, armchair one
Actually many people in this thread and on this board are more knowledgeable than me. Also, if you're into technical aspect, check sites like F1technical, some seriously clever and devoted people there. And of course Scarbs, he's simply amazing. Not only he has great knowlege, but his concise explanation is really helpful.



To add to Talisman, coke bottle is also an aggressive use of high pressure air zone in front of rear tyres, sort of.
When flat bottom was introduced, at first several teams tried very short sidepod in an attempt to reduce drag as much as possible, like this Brabahm >> http://g.io.ua/img_aa/large/1667/78/16677862.jpg
it was successful only shortly. Soon Mclaren came up with better solution, which was coke bottle. They thought that speeding up the airflow around the diffuser would make the diffuser alot more effective.
look at this renault,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...use_FRA_001.JPG
the airflow at sides of the car is fast and neutral, but is just wasted by the massive rear tyres which creates big drag when it hits the air. So Mclaren thought that making the space between tyre and bodywork and letting the air escape into that space would not only reduce the drag but also improve diffuser function significantly. Besides, they also came up with an idea of using high pressure air in front of rear tyres.
Take a look at overhead shot of MP4/4 for example.

you can see sidepod bodywork suddenly got tightened around in front of rear tyres. you would wonder why they didnt make this part of bodywork smoother and more gradual rather than sudden and abrupt tightening like that, as according to simple aero theory the sudden and big gap like that would cause air stall/separate. But thing is to make use of fast and clean air at sidepods, and the high pressure air in front of rear tyres. Naked tyres create huge drag and high pressure air zone when it hits the air. Coke bottle is, to throw the fast air flowing along sidepod at the rear tyre, then lead the high pressure air into the low pressure area (the open space between tyre and bodywork). By doing so, the high pressure air gets released and flows into the low pressure zone (upper diffuser as well as beam wing) at significantly faster speed, helping extract the underbody air at diffuser.

Since then the concept had evolved heavily, incorporating many new ideas.
'93 Williams first introduced big undercut at the back of sidepod. '93 Mclaren introduced barge board, as well as undercut. '95 or so winglet in front of rear tyres appeared. All these later evolved into "deck" (upper exhaust and rear body undercut), if you know what I mean. (sth like this >> http://www.trax-models.co.uk/images/uploads/TWC1999.jpg, http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/wp-content/uplo...z_2001_schu.jpg
In 2002 Ferrari started to make departure from "deck", and have separate winglet + tapered down / tightened rear-end. F2003 introduced undercut, this time at the front of sidepod. In 2005 onwards, many teams started pushing this concept even further.

These many features - coke bottle, high nose/monocoque, barge board, pod fin, sidepod undercut, narrow rear bodywork, front wing end plate, EBD etc - are all aimed at controlling airflow and feeding more, cleaner air to the lower side of the car then to the rear, and speeding up airflow at upper diffuser, as much as possible.

Pardon my poor english, I hope it makes sense and someone will make corrections or back that up.

If you can explain complicated aerodynamic concepts concisely then your English certainly isn't poor!

That sounds very good.


Can I also add that the steeper a diffuser is, the more air it will pull . Therefore for a fixed angle (like the F1 diffuser) the more air that can be given to it, the more it will work. Anybody can see this easily with a wind/water tunnel or some cfd program. Imagine more of the streamlines being pulled down under the plate, as the angle gets steeper.

->---
->---
->- _____
------->


->-----------
->-------------
->---\ _____/
.........->------
------->------


->-------> ---------
->--\.......... /
->- \\ _____/
.......\------>
.........------>
------------->

(Obviously the steepness is exaggerated!)

That is the overcomplicated way it is taught in grade 3 unfortunately though.

If they could just get a plate and a fan, and let them experience that titling the plate down will push air down to make lift which can they can feel... then they could ramble on about the rounded front edge being a good idea afterwards. Many less confused third graders!

Mclaren ditched the high nose concept after testing it on a modified mp4-5... (or mp4-6..)



Not convinced they kept the low nose.. So they ran an illegal car?

I think not. High noses were never mandated byFIA. That is a complete BS assumption.

High noses made their way into the sport because of aero developments..not rules.. Nothing to do with safety.
Mclaren was seriously behind on that learning curve. Even their first raised nose car mp4-7 was very conservative in this sense.

Wrong.

Ah come on. I thought this misunderstanding was already made clear. The high noses introduced by Tyrrell and then copied by most teams in the 90s were more efficient. The rule you are referring to isn't about this with lownoses vs highnoses.

Edit: Tyrrell 019 in 1990

Thanks for the picture. The key aerodynamic problem of such a design as McLaren tested here is that you lose a lot of downforce as the wing is so much above the ground.The high nose, high nose stem/section in fron of the safety cell and the low front wing have since dominated as they turned out to be part of the best package.

the funny thing about this new rule is that noses are not lower at all. the final height is the same, meaning no change in a T crash.

The nose, and the wing are two entirely different things. Noses began to life in the early 1990s, in 2005 the wing was lifted up closer to the already long separated nose.

Low noses are much better aerodynamically but it's about downforce these days ...



Nope, the high noses allow what is effectively a 3rd wing (air dam to be precise) under the drivers legs at the front of the floor to work better and helps to accelerate and clear air from behind the front wing.

Teams actually don't want air going under the car and that's why RBR has the front edge of the floor touching the ground - the less air under the car the more effective the diffuser is.




Not, you arrive at a point where all you get is separation and you lose all your downforce - quite suddenly too as they found out in the early 80's with some nasty results (cars pitching and increasing the angle to that point).