RE: Nissan powers DeltaWing Le Mans bid

[BarnatosGhost]

CBR JGWRR said:

BarnatosGhost said:

Interesting post. I can see the 'point' in a shape like concorde, for displaying as much of the frontal area in wing format as possible, but I don't get how that translates to a car, for whom the wheels are a 'bad thing', rather than a 'good thing' like a wing.

I'm not doubting the truth of your post, I just don't quite 'get it'. Also, pushing all the weight backwards and reducing tyre size up front commensurately seems to run counter to the received wisdom of mass centralisation and 50/50 distribution.

Though the idea of fast, close racing without the mucky air of wings and downforce sounds great. Which begs the question: Why hasn't it always been done like this?

Because nobody has tried anything like it before.

Thousands of the very brightest, most competitive people on the planet have spent their whole careers thinking about nothing except this very problem, and didn't come-up with this?

Do you think Adrian Newey is sitting at his breakfast table with a copy of autosport with his head in his hands - "how can I have been so stupid?"

[MattMF1]

To anyone that wants to see it in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wlQAvEfmeI

[Aids0G]

Cant wait to see this race this year, will be a welcome change to see something totally different, even if it is not on the pace the fact that is there is an achievement in itself, should be great.

and for all those saying it will be slow and terrible would it be reasonable to assume that Nissan wouldn't invest in a car they knew was going to be off the pace would it??

[mat205125]

BarnatosGhost said:

mat205125 said:

My observation, however, is that the car will be able to scribe a much straighter path through the tighter corners, e.g. the chicanes towards the end of the LaSarthe lap, due to it being much much narrower at the nose.

What sort of path do you expect the tail to be 'scribing', if not a similar one to the nose?

Similar, yes, however not identical. The narrower nose will allow a straighter line through a chicane.

Having said that , it doesn't take a genius to predict that there will be a lot of rear bodywork to marker cone collisions.

[gofasterrosssco]

Maybe the point of the delta-wing is to create some form of super-cavitation...

Who knows, looks great, and I'll let the aerodynamicists and chassis designers worry about the details..

[Chris71]

BarnatosGhost said:

Chris71 said:

BarnatosGhost said:

Surely the only advantage to this kind of shape is in some clever aero and/or aspiration/cooling (and even then, the impact on frontal area is negligible, since it still has a cockpit and engine between two wheels.)

The shape is indeed driven by aerodynamics. Eliminating the wings is intended to dramatically reduce the wake for closer, safer racing. The very narrow front end has significant drag benefits, even though it tapers out to a wide rear. Think of the wing span of something like Concorde and then consider the width of its nose...

Overall the drag figure is half that of a traditional open wheeler (bearing in mind it started off as an IRL concept) and still a lot better than a conventional LMP.

The other benefit of getting the weight really far back is apparently stability. The centre of gravity acts much closer to where the majority of the tyre area is to be found and we're told it'll be more stable under braking than a normal design as well as easier to recover from 'over the limit manoeuvres'.

Basically, less weight and less drag prompts a virtuous circle. It's designed to return the same performance as a modern IRL car (or LMP) on half the engine output and half the fuel consumption.

Interesting post. I can see the 'point' in a shape like concorde, for displaying as much of the frontal area in wing format as possible, but I don't get how that translates to a car, for whom the wheels are a 'bad thing', rather than a 'good thing' like a wing.

I'm not doubting the truth of your post, I just don't quite 'get it'. Also, pushing all the weight backwards and reducing tyre size up front commensurately seems to run counter to the received wisdom of mass centralisation and 50/50 distribution.

Though the idea of fast, close racing without the mucky air of wings and downforce sounds great. Which begs the question: Why hasn't it always been done like this?

I think the answer is you still need the width somewhere. On a plane it's to generate lift area, on a car it's to package everything and get the chassis dynamics right. If you think of the two ends separately then it's the rear that does all the work and needs the tyre area and the track width, the front doesn't.

You see a less extreme version of this on formula cars. The huge rear tyres do most of the work, but the fronts can be slimmed down to reduce drag. I don't know what an F1 car's weight distribution is like, but I'd guess it's notably rear biased. Most road cars, on the other hand, run similar tyre sizes and track widths front-to-rear, hence it's advantageous for them to equalise the load on all four wheels. As for centralising the mass, that's to reduce the polar moment (pendulum effect, you you like) and it's only a problem if the mass is a long way from the axle that's doing the work. The mass is concentrated here - very concentrated - it's just at the back rather than in the middle.

Okay, the test run in the video doesn't look massively fast, but I believe that's more or less the first time the car turned a wheel. There are going to be teething troubles and you're going to be tentative.

The guys behind this project really know their stuff, and if you speak to the majority of F1 engineers and aerodynamicists they're behind it too. It is a leap into the unknown, but hopefully it'll challenge the 'it doesn't look conventional therefore it must fail' mentality...

Edited by Chris71 on Tuesday 13th March 16:46

[BoRED S2upid]

Thats ace. With it being developmental will it be allowed secret technology like the real batmobile?

[Chris71]

Speedy11 said:

Chris71 said:

The shape is indeed driven by aerodynamics. Eliminating the wings is intended to dramatically reduce the wake for closer, safer racing. The very narrow front end has significant drag benefits, even though it tapers out to a wide rear. Think of the wing span of something like Concorde and then consider the width of its nose...

Concorde's delta wing shape is nothing to do with drag, more to do with the shock wave from supersonic flight.

Okay, perhaps a supersonic plane was a bad example. But are you telling me a brick and a tear drop of the same overall width incur a comparable drag force?

ETA I have to confess, in basic academic terms the Cd of a wedge isn't actually that good it turns out. It's a lot better than a brick, but not great. I can only assume there are other effects, though, as I know the designer of this project was very keen on reducing the area of the nose.

Edited by Chris71 on Tuesday 13th March 16:57

[HeavySoul]

Some interesting detail shots over here

I think it is great to see something a bit different actually going for it.

Full credit to everyone involved - I look forward to seeing how it goes

[CBR JGWRR]

BarnatosGhost said:

CBR JGWRR said:

BarnatosGhost said:

Interesting post. I can see the 'point' in a shape like concorde, for displaying as much of the frontal area in wing format as possible, but I don't get how that translates to a car, for whom the wheels are a 'bad thing', rather than a 'good thing' like a wing.

I'm not doubting the truth of your post, I just don't quite 'get it'. Also, pushing all the weight backwards and reducing tyre size up front commensurately seems to run counter to the received wisdom of mass centralisation and 50/50 distribution.

Though the idea of fast, close racing without the mucky air of wings and downforce sounds great. Which begs the question: Why hasn't it always been done like this?

Because nobody has tried anything like it before.

Thousands of the very brightest, most competitive people on the planet have spent their whole careers thinking about nothing except this very problem, and didn't come-up with this?

Do you think Adrian Newey is sitting at his breakfast table with a copy of autosport with his head in his hands - "how can I have been so stupid?"

Well, we only got where we are because somebody thought "I wonder what happens when I put this sheet of metal onto supports and mount on the car." and then trying it out, for example. It's a process of "What happens if we do this..." and this hasn't been done.




I'm not going to say it's rubbish, and I'm not going to say it's brilliant. It's a new idea, and it seems to work, perhaps contary to how convention says it should. But should we dismiss it purely because of that?

If it works, it works. If it doesn't, then the concept has at least been tried.


As to Adrian Newey, I imagine he has read about it, and evaluating it from his perspective. Certainly, I don't think he might dismiss it straight away, or think his way is not as good as it.




We'll find out how well it works in June.

[TheHeretic]

Love it... Absolutely love it!

[BarnatosGhost]

mat205125 said:

BarnatosGhost said:

mat205125 said:

My observation, however, is that the car will be able to scribe a much straighter path through the tighter corners, e.g. the chicanes towards the end of the LaSarthe lap, due to it being much much narrower at the nose.

What sort of path do you expect the tail to be 'scribing', if not a similar one to the nose?

Similar, yes, however not identical. The narrower nose will allow a straighter line through a chicane.

Having said that , it doesn't take a genius to predict that there will be a lot of rear bodywork to marker cone collisions.

Sorry, I disagree. Assuming similar slip-angles, the rear wheels track inside the fronts, so it won't make any difference to the route through a chicane.

In fact, if the disparity between front and rear tracks makes banging it up curbs a bad thing to do, it might even have to take a LONGER route through a chicane than a conventional 'square' format.

[Northern Munkee]

Aids0G said:

Cant wait to see this race this year, will be a welcome change to see something totally different, even if it is not on the pace the fact that is there is an achievement in itself, should be great.

and for all those saying it will be slow and terrible would it be reasonable to assume that Nissan wouldn't invest in a car they knew was going to be off the pace would it??

It will get an awful lot of attention.

Did someone say it develops a lot of downforce underbody? I can't remember and anyone can correct if wrong, but normal LMPs flat bottomed cars, hence the need for the fin to stop them flipping. A sort of all things being equal underbody it wouldn't stand a chance, a bit like the diesel v petrol debate.

Personally happy to see something so radical, given the way LMP cars look so similar, this is sort of the radical Colin Chapman/Gordon Murray sort of thing so missing from modern F1/prototype designs due to the prescriptive rules.

That nose looks fairly neutral on downforce, so I can understand the thin tyres due to lack of load or mass, but it still wouldn't turn, and understeering, so something must be going on in the rear to make it corner, or somehow it's ballistic in a straight-line, although the front cross section is not that dissimilar to an LMP car.

Interesting though.

Edited by Northern Munkee on Tuesday 13th March 16:56

[Speedy11]

Chris71 said:

Okay, perhaps a supersonic plane was a bad example. But are you telling me a brick and a tear drop of the same overall width incur a comparable drag force?

No, I am saying that compared to normal wings a delta wing has more drag. But looking at this picture



it has the same front section as a normal car, so why not have it wide at the front and have a nice wide track at the front and back?

[BarnatosGhost]

CBR JGWRR said:

BarnatosGhost said:

CBR JGWRR said:

BarnatosGhost said:

Interesting post. I can see the 'point' in a shape like concorde, for displaying as much of the frontal area in wing format as possible, but I don't get how that translates to a car, for whom the wheels are a 'bad thing', rather than a 'good thing' like a wing.

I'm not doubting the truth of your post, I just don't quite 'get it'. Also, pushing all the weight backwards and reducing tyre size up front commensurately seems to run counter to the received wisdom of mass centralisation and 50/50 distribution.

Though the idea of fast, close racing without the mucky air of wings and downforce sounds great. Which begs the question: Why hasn't it always been done like this?

Because nobody has tried anything like it before.

Thousands of the very brightest, most competitive people on the planet have spent their whole careers thinking about nothing except this very problem, and didn't come-up with this?

Do you think Adrian Newey is sitting at his breakfast table with a copy of autosport with his head in his hands - "how can I have been so stupid?"

Well, we only got where we are because somebody thought "I wonder what happens when I put this sheet of metal onto supports and mount on the car." and then trying it out, for example. It's a process of "What happens if we do this..." and this hasn't been done.




I'm not going to say it's rubbish, and I'm not going to say it's brilliant. It's a new idea, and it seems to work, perhaps contary to how convention says it should. But should we dismiss it purely because of that?

If it works, it works. If it doesn't, then the concept has at least been tried.


As to Adrian Newey, I imagine he has read about it, and evaluating it from his perspective. Certainly, I don't think he might dismiss it straight away, or think his way is not as good as it.




We'll find out how well it works in June.

Aye. Don't get me wrong, I want it to work. Partly because it looks effing cool, but mostly if it makes for closer racing.

I just can't help thinking that the days of huge changes and giant leaps forward are over, given the huge brains, huge budgets and huge computers that have been devoted to this exact problem over the history of motor-racing.

[CBR JGWRR]

BarnatosGhost said:

Aye. Don't get me wrong, I want it to work. Partly because it looks effing cool, but mostly if it makes for closer racing.

I just can't help thinking that the days of huge changes and giant leaps forward are over, given the huge brains, huge budgets and huge computers that have been devoted to this exact problem over the history of motor-racing.

It could be one great leap forward, but the only way to know is to see it in action.


A quick couple of lap demo with other cars and a laptimer to show it's on pace would be good.

[Chris71]

Speedy11 said:

It has the same front section as a normal car, so why not have it wide at the front and have a nice wide track at the front and back?

You mean the nosecone alone? It's only the same as a normal open-wheeler (rather than a closed-wheel LMP) and exposed wheels are very, very draggy.

[V12 Migaloo]

Understeer anyone???

[Fire99]

Joy.. So a car that doesn't 'handle' Just has vast aerodynamic grip and a lack of power. Maybe they should go for F1. They'll get along well there, with that philosophy.

[Speedy11]

Chris71 said:

You mean the nosecone alone? It's only the same as a normal open-wheeler (rather than a closed-wheel LMP), and exposed wheels are very, very draggy.

No sorry I mean it has a big sectional area some at the front and some at the back, why not have it all at the front like a normal car? A bit like an old can am

What I am trying to say is there doesn't seam to be a drag benefit from the delta wing shape, more from the lack of wings.