F1 rear wings look complicated, but aren't actually that hard once you break them down. In today's lesson, I walk you through all the features of the F1 rear wing, what they are for, and how they work.
Hi there Kyle, I love your videos man. They taught me alot and im glad you get technical on them and I'm pretty sure you can get even more technical. Well, I volunteer on a race team on my days off and I help out with the pit crew stuff but I really want to get in the data analysis part of it. And your videos taught me to understand the functions of the car at the track, even though I'm a full time mechanic. Are there any tips or experiments I can do at the track when I'm with the team? I can give you an email or something so you can see pictures of the race car. And keep the videos coming, I think they're great.
Angel Alvarez You're right in that I could get more technical on my videos, but I think at that point they'd be so specific that no-one would watch them! Plus I wouldn't be a good race car consultant if I gave away all my secrets =P Regarding on track testing, there's a lot of ways you can evaluate the aerodynamics of the car, some low cost, some high cost. Shoot me a message at the Kyleengineers facebook page with some pictures and a brief description of what you want to test and I'll take a quick look. Thanks for the compliments!
the vanes on the lower end of the rear wing fin end plate looks like it is steering air behind the rear wheels thus reducing the vacuum and control the air flow behind the rear wheels ;)
@@oeliku3033 you've not understood what i said .... air is being steered into that turbulent region to reduce the turbulence created by the vacuum effect, not steering the air behind the wheels but steering air into that region... comprenday vue ?? :)
@@freezatron thats where you are wrong. You cant reduce turbulence - you can only prevent it or "push" the turbulent areas with laminar flow or vorteces, but thats 100% not whats that for. The lower part of the endplate most likely increases longitudinal stability and prevents the vortecy that forms on top of the endplate to form on the bottom. Also they are the connection elements for the rear wing, since you would have to do that in front of the wing or inside the low pressure area under the Wing/Flaps otherwise (eg like on some group C cars). So I dont think they are aerodynamicly important at all - just shaped so that they dont cause much drag. Edit: Also: what use is there to steer anything BEHIND your car ;D
@@oeliku3033 No, this is where you appear to be wrong ;) One of the main purposes of aerodynamics is to reduce drag and control turbulence, pumping a stream of controlled air into the drag pocket behind the wheel will do just that ..... The whole point of all those little fins along the barge board is to reorganize turbulent flow into organized vortices to re-energize the flow further down the car etc. etc. etc. The main portion of the end plates on the rear wing will be to control the flow from the high pressure to the low pressure areas. The point of "steering" ie. guiding the air behind the car is to control the turbulence and reduce the drag, for you to say that there are parts on cars like these that are not aerodynamically important at all merely demonstrates your profound ignorance on the subject. F1 teams are not going to be in the habit of spending precious time and money on designing aerodynamic parts that serve no purpose. Having studied aerodynamics I'm not getting the impression you have, in fact it is clear to me that your opinion is not worth anything on the matter and that you've simply trying to pick a fight about something you appear to know little about, I wish you hadn't left a comment now .... Btw, no need to seize the last word, I'll just assume it was something clever :)
@@freezatron But you increase drag by moving air and you achive nothing doing it, since the air behind the car is exacly that - behind the car - and the wheels create most turbulence towards the outside anyway. Not speaking of the HUGE region of turbulent air behind the car and the rear wing, that you cant get rid of. Maybe you jump of your high horse and name me an actual reason why you would want to control the air behind the rear wheels? Also the bargeboards are mainly to seal the undertray of the car to increase the ground effect (by preventing air from "spilling" out the sides) (at least as far as I know). And well - you do you. But trying to sound clever in a youtube comment with your little ";D" face and then only doing the "I studied that" card is pretty lame tbh
I heard that the holes in the endplate generate thrust, is this true? Can I put holes in my car and generate more thrust? Would there be enough thrust that I can make the car fly if I put some retractable wings on it?
Fabio Iasiello Think of it from a big picture perspective. The only energy you're giving the system is the kinetic energy of the wing through stationary air. Vortices are created by bending air into a circular flow, which is creating new movement. That takes some energy to do, and that has to come from somewhere. Since the only supply of energy is coming from the wing being forced through the air by immolating compressed dino corpses, the energy is thus taken from the wing.
@@SeanLillibridge I get that the energy is bled from the wing, but not why it would give you increased drag. If a wing is 100% efficient, its dragfactor would be the highest. Vortices reduce the wing's efficiency...so the drag should be less (the wing isn't holding you down/back as much as it could be doing without the vortices).
vorteces form on almost all sharp edges that are effected by fast air. Basicly you have pressure differences between the inside and the outside and the air has massive amounts of energy. This creates the same effect like he explained when the wing doesnt have an endplate In fact, keeping the flow of air laminar arround a structure is extremely hard, so vorteces or turbulent air will naturally form almost everywhere
At 8:35 when you draw the pressure forces acting on the rear wing, do they both act downwards? Or does the force on the bottom act upwards and because it is smaller there is a net pressure force acting downwards (the downforce)?
I get that the energy is bled from the wing, but not why it would give you increased drag. If a wing is 100% efficient, its dragfactor would be the highest. Vortices reduce the wing's efficiency...so the drag should be less (the wing isn't holding you down/back as much as it could be doing without the vortices).
think of the airflow in terms of momentum. Assuming the freestream oncoming air is mostly in the lengthwise direction of the car (x-axis), when that air gets turned into a vortex, it loses some of that lengthwise momentum for span-wise momentum (z-axis). The drag force here would be roughly proportionate to how much lengthwise moment was lost after the air was turned. In terms of wing efficiency...wing efficiency is defined as the ratio of lift/drag, so losing efficiency does not mean drag was reduced, but the opposite. since efficiency and drag are inversely proportional, the vorticity of the wing reduces the lift of the wing which makes the wing less efficient. "If a wing is 100% efficient, its dragfactor would be the highest" this is not true because efficiency is L/D. so at infinite efficiency, drag would go to 0.
@@bossert_ So I have to view vortices as drag inducing because the engine not only moves the car forwards (x-axis) but also spanwise (z-axis) because the air gets moved in this plane too? I didn't know that efficiency of a wing was defined this way. I have heard multiple times people say (credible) that a wing gives you "more drag". I guess they are trying to say (with DRS in mind) that a wing holds you back when going for straight line speed. Thank you for the explanation btw, I'm not an engineer :p
@@anomalyp8584 so the engine provides the airflow by spinning the wheels and moving the car forward through air, that is where the energy and momentum come from. It is in a straight line as the car moves forward (this is called freestream flow). Afterwards, the bodywork of the car turns the air in a vortex which takes energy and momentum out of the straight line flow and converts it into rotational momentum and energy. The net loss of momentum and energy from when the air goes from a straight line into this spinning vortex is where this drag comes from. The flow will have less straight line flow at the end of the car because some of it got turned into vortices. The efficiency is just a measurement of how much lift you get for how much drag you have. The wing will always be producing drag, but to be efficient you want to make as much downforce possible without adding too much drag. It's okay to not understand parts of aerodynamics. This stuff is very hard. I am getting my Master's in aerodynamics right now and am still learning stuff daily!
@@bossert_ you may not even read this but really thank you for this comment, I knew about efficiency of a wing and that vortices create drag but I never understood why. It makes sense that by converting the momentum of the air into the z direction you are loosing energy, and thus creating drag
Thread is old, but I would like to add that @anomaly P is mostly correct. For the sake of precision, we would need to add some wording to say for a given airfoil profile at a given speed and angle of attack with miraculously zero vortices, the lift is maximized and the drag is also maximized, the lift/drag(wing efficiency) ratio is maximized, but it has a value of around 2.5 for an F1 car, and 17 for a boeing 747. With vortices allowed, the drag is indeed decreased. This is due to the decreased pressure wingtip regions on the frontal area of the wing(illustrated by Kyle) and increased pressure wingtip regions on the rearward area of the wing. We know by conservation of energy arguments the wing efficiency lift/drag must be less. All this means is that you lose more lift due to allowing vortices than you do drag. anomaly P has better intuition/understanding than most engineers for spotting this. To sum up the main point, if you take the wingtip fence off of a wing and keep everything else the same, vortices will develop, the total drag force will go DOWN a little bit ~5% as anomaly P said, and the downforce will go down a lot ~15%. If you need the same downforce that you had with the original fenced wing, you would need to increase the size of the unfenced wing by ~15% so to a rough approximation you might end up with 10% more drag compared to the equivalent fenced wing.
What sort of effect do the small upsidedown triangles on the very top of a wing do? I've seen them on a few F1 cars and they call them vortex generators but I don't know how they work in practice. They sometimes leave a white trail behind.
Anthony Stuart In comparison to the magnitude of the vortices from the main wing and diffuser, as well as the massive tyre wakes and exhaust plume, I doubt the lower slots are going to have a substantial effect on the trailing cars downforce. Thanks for watching!
