More Westfield aero work

[Jimmy Choo]

I spent many years as an analyst, so I'm a magpie - I read other people's research and nick the conclusions relevant to me, without necessary fully understanding all the detail and complicated maths of the theory that goes behind it.

[Nefarious]

I've now tested on the road and it works (well, as far as a roadtest can tell me). Nothing fell off, nothing fouled anything else - both of which are a good start!
With both front and rear wings in place, the car feels noticeably more planted on the road. Turn in feels sharper too - the reaction to steering inputs (tested doing high-speed lane changes on the motorway) feels much more immediate, like the slight sidewall flex in the tyres has been eliminated. It's all subjective at this stage, but overall it feel like the difference between driving on decent road tyres and driving on warm trackday tyres.

I couldn't detect much in the way of additional drag, but traffic prevented doing a proper Vmax run to confirm.

It could be my imagination, but I think there was a little less cockpit buffeting too (sunglasses stayed on my face well into 3 figures!) - it would be a slightly surprising result, but if correct would mean that my theory about reducing downstream turbulence was true.

[jamcg]

Thought I had whilst testing a customers chimney- If you’re wanting to analyse the airflow could you use something like a garden blower with a couple of smoke bombs to visualise what’s going on?

[Nefarious]

Thought I had whilst testing a customers chimney- If you’re wanting to analyse the airflow could you use something like a garden blower with a couple of smoke bombs to visualise what’s going on?

Unfortunately, it's too slow. I've tried using smoke detector tester pellets (£5 for a pack of 6 from Screwfix!) and a strategically positioned GoPro. It's fine at low speeds (sub-25mph) but as the speeds rise you lose the ability to see what's going on. Problem is, high speed stuff isn't like low speed but more - as speeds rise the pattern of flow changes (greater separation, thicker boundary layer, more turbulence). For example - the endplates (which I haven't made yet!) would just show smoke spilling over them onto the tyres at 30mph - not enough velocity to pick up the wake over the tyre centre line, or to generate vortices off the tips. All that air crashing into the tyres will just create a turbulent mess at slow speeds, but the theory is that once the speed increases, the air will leave the tip of the wing at a steeper angle, hit the tyre higher up, and maintain a more laminar flow.

[jamcg]

Thought I had whilst testing a customers chimney- If you’re wanting to analyse the airflow could you use something like a garden blower with a couple of smoke bombs to visualise what’s going on?

Unfortunately, it's too slow. I've tried using smoke detector tester pellets (£5 for a pack of 6 from Screwfix!) and a strategically positioned GoPro. It's fine at low speeds (sub-25mph) but as the speeds rise you lose the ability to see what's going on. Problem is, high speed stuff isn't like low speed but more - as speeds rise the pattern of flow changes (greater separation, thicker boundary layer, more turbulence). For example - the endplates (which I haven't made yet!) would just show smoke spilling over them onto the tyres at 30mph - not enough velocity to pick up the wake over the tyre centre line, or to generate vortices off the tips. All that air crashing into the tyres will just create a turbulent mess at slow speeds, but the theory is that once the speed increases, the air will leave the tip of the wing at a steeper angle, hit the tyre higher up, and maintain a more laminar flow.

Thought it sounded too easy, thanks for the explanation keep up the good work