RC Car Extreme Aerodynamics 

Attach an accelerometer to measure peak lateral g-force with and without aero.

remember, aerodynamic forces are generated almost primarily on the low-pressure side of the surface -- flow detachment on the bottom of your wings isn't just creating drag, it's also severely limiting the amount of downforce you're generating. less angle of attack on those wings might actually generate more downforce since they wouldn't be stalling. if you wanted to keep the aggressive angle of attack, you should upgrade to a multi-element setup to keep flow attachment.

This video really helped me on my Speedrun project! My car kept flipping up at the front at high speed, saw this video and made a front spoiler and it worked!! Thank you 🙏🏾

The good old trick of sticking some bits of yarn all over the car would probably reveal a lot of the possible aerodynamic issues. Also, for a more consistent test, drive in a circle as fast as the car can go, and measure how fast the car can go around a circle with a certain radius. The benefit of this is that you can use quite simple physics to figure out if the aerodynamics is providing a meaningful downforce to assist the car - namely, if the centripetal acceleration in a corner is continuously higher than 1.0g, then you have conclusively demonstrated the presence of downforce.

Lift does not increase with the area squared, but rather the speed squared. Area is just A^1

I can tell you right now, Im gonna rip off the fan in front of the smoke machine idea

Suggestion: use a multi flaps wings like the current f1 cars instead of the shovel, you can get a lower profile front wing with an increased surface area

You definitely should test with the kit body. Aero makes a big difference, at least in 10th scale racing. We notice the handling difference by just changing the body and leaving the wings the same!

Great project, maybe on a smoother track, like inside a sport arena, you could experiment more with the ground-effect.

Very interesting stuff. Having had a tiny role in some F1 aero (I once mechanically designed a blade antenna that went on the 2002 Williams) I know how much effort the teams put into the TINIEST details to gain miniscule improvements. I was impressed with William's input and care and totally shocked by Jaguars lack of it (also did their antenna).

That F1 edit at the end was phenomenal!

The crash was like an how an actual F1 car would crash but instead it would break into pieces COOL!!! Love your work man.

A selfmade wind tunnel would be An interesting project in itself and a nice tool in the development of future builds.

Yeah, this is really cool, but definitively needed to be more scientific. Even without the wings, the car could go full speed through the corner. At that point, the only thing the wings can do is slow the car down with drag. You need to find a corner that the bare-body version can't get around without slowing down, and then see if the wings improve it. Pointing the camera at the suspensions and seeing it pushed down would also be a really good indicator

love the old Williams livery. RIP Sir Frank Williams

Aerodynamics on rc cars is something I never thought about, very cool

Some suggestions: Testing each change individually, and periodically re-testing the base no aero setup, and documenting how each change affected the car positively/negatively. I know it's a lot of work, but would be fun to watch I think, as we could follow the progress in detail with you. I think this could be an interesting ongoing project to follow over time, with further experimentation as time goes on, maybe one day have active aero for a more varied track. Comparing the stock aero from the factory could also be something interesting to see. As for suggestions, I would go with softening the rear shock absorbers a bit, maybe with a lighter oil, as it looks like the car is getting thrown around from those big bumps without absorbing them. 3D printing aero parts might also be a way to have lighter parts that are also precise. Anyway, definitely please continue this project. =)

If you want to learn anything from these experiments, you should be more methodical and try to isolate one factor each time, running the same test (or as similar as possible). For example, you should have tested the smaller wing at that same corner, without changing the rake angle and adding the splitter-diffuser floor.

That box on the top will be creating such a lot of drag, it’s like a pocket for the air to suck into

Sweet RC body modifications! and love the F1 sounds 😂

Great video James! I'm not a car guy but this was really interesting. That smoke machine + EDF worked really well to visualize the airflow!

If it's a square relationship doesn't double wing equal quadruple lift/downforce?

You also needed the car with the stock bodywork and underside stuff to see how it compares. It could be that with the speeds and weights involved, the body they have designed already does an OK job. Probably easier to add to that than start from scratch.

I think you misunderstand "drag" and "downforce". Of course I'm not an expert, but I'm somewhat confident that just like at an airplane, where most force gets generated at the *top* side of the wing, the majority of the downforce of your car gets generated at the *bottom* of the car's wing. That means, if you have layer separation (=stall) at the bottom side of your wing, then this does not just increase drag, it also drastically decreases the downforce.

I used to race RC cars nearly 20 years ago - indoor 1/12th on a reasonably large carpet track with a decent straight. I remember playing around with different body shells and rear wing combinations and there were deffinately differences to be felt - less so with shells, but a decent rear wing with end fences definately made them more stable down the long straight. That could then be balanced with better front end grip allowing good tracking down the straights, with pointy stearing response for the tight corners. Not talking huge differences here, but when you are used to running the same car on the same circuit (we did change track layouts once a month) with controlled indoor conditions, then you do start to notice the small setup changes which you can make and the small differences adding a big wing with fences can make. Fun fact, the track used to rubber in over the course of the month - when the carpet was hoovered at track change time, the grip the first week of the new setup was awful. We didn't use tyre addatives, just the natural rubbering in of the foam tyres on the carpet. 'Marbles' (dust and general crap) off line was a thing too!

Great video as always. I’m a little surprised you didn’t test the car with the stock bodywork installed to see if the massive wings were an improvement over the scale ones.

Good job kid, (I'm old, probably 3x or 4x your age). I hope my 10 year old kid with get interested with engineering and physics stuff like this. Subscribed!

Wawwww, Just discovered this youtube channel. Keep up the good work!!!!!

I know this isn't the aerodynamics that is being used in F1 today, but it does leave you impressed about how it began and the what the basics of downforce and aerodynamics are.

maybe raise the spoiler and remove the skirts in f1 they stopped the skirts because of increases in crashes also, the big size with the large angles of the aero could make handling harder

Here's it completely new concept, mount an upside-down RC airplane wing like 4 inch above the RC car right at the center of gravity, so it pushes both front and rear down equally

This video made me subscribed, honestly I was pretty impressed with the quality of this video

Given what you know about airplanes, why are you not using the "wings" in a more traditional sense? As in, as you explained in the beginning of this video, using the wing, just upside down. Consider building an airplane that wants to climb more and more the faster you get...you'd never build an airplane with that angle of attack. I personally would love to see a video where you try to use the aerodynamics of a wing, even if protrudes beyond the base chassis, to prove that wings can push the chassis down...maybe have a scale on the front axis to try to measure?

Hope you enjoyed this month's video! Let me know what you want to see me build next! Correction to the lift calculations -the full lift formula is L = Cl * A * .5 * r * V^2 More info here www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/lifteq.html

The onboard camera footage was ace, can really see how any small bump in the road really messes those things up

Project Air: makes something that will definitely not fly

The wing angle of attack should be in the 7° to 13° range to avoid flow separation on the back. To increase down force you can split one big wing into several smaller ones with progressively higher angle of attack, so that each is ~7° steeper than the one before it, and shallower than the one after it. Aerofoil cross section matters.

Your understeer was a combination of more downforce from that wing and also the drag high up at the rear. The rear wing drag is like a lever acting on the rear wheels as a pivot. Those wings are only generating downforce by increasing pressure on the top surface. You should print a proper profile to get lower pressure on the bottom rather than just separating as you discovered

With the f1 sound it was epic!

9:22 love the V10 F1 sound

Compession of suspension components to a calibrated set point would give down force value and a split front/back , but would need a smooth running surface. Awesome vid btw 👍👍👍

Also you have to consider the drag force caused by big spoilers increasing the frontal surface area... There is a relationship between drag and downforce...

That bump on the turn is killing me

For future car/land-based vehicle experiments, I'd suggest bringing a broom to clear up the track a little heheh

I'd be interested in seeing how the aerodynamics of the wings would affect the top speed.

I have a Lotus Elise Body on my 1:10 and when I remove the rear wing it becomes practically undriveable. Top speed is about a third higher than with the wing on. Also aerodynamic flow over the entire thing is super important too, not just the downforce of the wing.

That bump in the interior part of the turn is the main problem; you would definitely benefit from a road with no gravel 👌🏼

That's a really cool experiment, I'd love to try this out myself someday! You could also try implementing a tail-fan like the Gordon Murray T50. Also, lift increases with the square of velocity and not planform area [L = Cl * A * .5 * r * V^2].

Would love to see some active flow control applied to an RC car -- think: control surfaces and active feedback to vary grip based on commanded turn rate

The F1 sound at 9:21 oddly gave it perspective, cool project.

Love that the two images of an F1 car with aero were both Ayrton Senna!

It's very interesting to see how you are in front of the same problem than full scale. The ground effect could only work on flat surface, loosing the ground effect is so dangerous that it can't really be a good option except on perfect track. But using your smoking development aero system, you probably could test the actual F1 looking aerokit on your model. I'm impatient seeing it 😃

James, a very interesting video. This type of aero is like a law of diminishing returns but seeing as how your baseline was the bare chassis with no aero then the initial gains are going to be massive, I can tell you that an 1/8 scale IC car with no body work is very unsettled, put even an average body like a Lancia LC2 an there is a huge initial difference, then the gains are smaller and much harder to find. At one point later in the video where you had understeer, you had the car pivoting about the back axle and actually lifting the front end. I done some wind tunnel testing with Ford on their first WRC Focus in the Cologne wind tunnel and this rotating around the axles is very noticeable. Ease off on the rear down force and some to the front and away you go. Don't listen to the doubters. Most of them have never done anything useful.

fun time 9:21 , good work, nice acceleration timing. "from Brazil

Ah man well-done with that real sound! Awesome and unexpected 😂😂👍❤

Huge issue with ground effect is that the scale of the RC car compared to the scale of the smoothness of the road is a much bigger issue than with a full-sized car, and they work HARD to make F1 tracks grippy enough for turning but smooth enough to not vibrate the hell out of the vehicles. Active aero could have potential but you'd need a fast computer on board to control it accurately.

I have always wondered about active Aero. Wings flatten out in a straight line, sensors pitch them up for more downforce in turns and turn them right up for braking. Also like to see the old fan car design that sucked the vehicle onto the road with engine power. They built one like this but it was so quick they banned it after one race. Always wish they Built a Demo car with all the tech like active aero, fans, turbos etc and see how much faster it could go round a track than the " legal" cars. I bet it would be a LOT faster.

Bị nghiện bài này từ thời Bảo Thy, ko ngờ lại có ngày được nghe idol mới trong lòng mình Đức Phúc cover lại. Cảm ơn em ĐP vì đã cover lại lắng đọng cảm xúc như vậy

Great to see you are applying Haas’s wind tunnel testing

Would be cool if you did some hard engineering as opposed to just tinkering. Interesting video regardless!

Companies spend millions in researching this. I'd suggest you mimic them and see why they've chosen what they have. Having a snow-plow in the front and back, won't do anything meaningful.

that car could make a good lawn mower

Giant trench (at RC scale) across the road just before the corner looks like the most significant element in determining cornering speed. In ~1/3 of the efforts you show, the entire car is thrown into the air by the bump, and in some of those the car is sideways or backwards before it's back on the ground.

DOWNFORCE!

1/8 scale BMT 911 4WD nitro buggy had active aero over the rear axle. It's rear spoiled had linkage attached directly to the rear swing-arms that would turn the rear spoiler as vertical as possible under braking. Conversely, it would flatten to horizontal as much as possible during hard acceleration. It definitely had a very significant effect on performance.

With winter coming and the inevitable frozen pond, how about making an RC sailing ice sled?

I want to se more! And you actually did well because you gained one sec in only one corner: it’s quite impressive.

Always enjoy seeing what you've come up with.

Tip: If ur RC car is going rlly rlly fast, use an airbrake, basically just make a huge cut and leave one side, then add a servo and make sure it pops up and make it so that when you brake the servo also activates the airbrake (I may be wrong). Love ur content ❤❤

Awesome video, aerodynamic is really an essencial key to achieve success! Cool Casio W-86!!

I would like to see you try a front rudder system attached via control arm to the steering system. I think you would have more steering control at high speeds.

Use a split front scoop to allow more air to pass over the front center of the car pushing down the rear. I did similar experiments with a Traxxas Jato 3.3. Full front scoop overheated the engine due to air deflection as I ran gas. With split scoop there was still a considerable difference in stearing ability against a stock Jato. Both had upgraded Road Rage tires and not the garbage stock Anacondas. Keep up the good work

PLEASE MAKE MORE THIS KIND OF VIDEOS I REALLY LOVE IT 😍

Those bumps were killing that thing! I will be attempting something similar to this thank you for the info and tips! Also, that editing with the old engine sound at 9:22 was awesome!

I'm making some aerodynamic improvements on my rc f1 project car and this video really helped me!

Hey I'm sure that the ground effect works underwater too because I can be a lot faster by swimming the nearest to the ground in a swimming pool than at the surface for sure

You should try mounting the wings high and attaching them directly to the suspension. High wings are more efficient and if you mount them to the suspension you don't lose mechanical grip from having to stiffen the suspension to compensate for the aero's compression on the suspension.

More like this please 👏🏻👍🏻

A wing that lifts up at higher speeds and rotates forward when braking would be cool

Sir please make one more video on this topic, as it very informative and enjoyable.

I got this same car going 154mph. Great choice of rc

Would love to see a rc time attack car that works like the real cars great vid man

That car looks smooth and cool

The reason why this car is so amazing is that it’s trade in efficency

Please make more f1 based tech video, more consistent and precise with time , looking forward for those content

You’re an excellent scientist / engineer. You tried hard to develop a quantifiable test and continued to evaluate your hypothesis. You also acknowledged that correlation did not guarantee causation.

Def adding a snow plow to my rc car this winter lol

i need to see more small scale car aero stuff its super interesting

If you’re keen to learn some tips have a look at 1/8th scale on road racing machines, rear wings attached directly to the rear hubs to avoid pitching under high downforce corners, plus foam tires with much less flex lend a huge amount to consistency

You should try making a wind tunnel. Should be pretty simple, just some kinda tube with a fan at the back

What you need is a way to accurately measure the down force. A vertically installed pin connected to the bottom plate of the car and poking through the body inside the shot of the camera will show how low the body is being manipulated downward. Paint rings on the pin and you have an accurate measure.

Martini-inspired livery, i like that touch

CUTS THE GRASS PRETTY GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!

From what I understand the primary thing about cars aerodynamics is keeping as much air as possible from getting under the car. Like keeping that front air dam/wing as low as possible. Take a look at some of the Pikes Peak cars made to run in lower density atmosphere.

I challenge you to do a rc car that actually has a working wing effect and decent aerodynamics next time!

Everytime i see a clip of Ayrton Senna i get the goosebumps

Very cool! you should try using some NACA air foils!

Dude this is awesome. I actually looked at this for my science fair project.

You can achieve the same effect by placing a brushless fan on the vehicle, just like Gordon Murray :D

I'd love to see more like this