Red Bull RB20

[Vanja #66]

Thank you.

But I do not 100% follow your description...there are now the two wings under the mirror mount which (obviously?) work for these two inlets.

I fear to really understand what these two inlets are doing, one needs to understand what the wings are doing, we can not interpret the inlet without the wing.

The new winglet promotes a bit of outwash in order to bring more clean air to the inlet, just like any typical winglet... The mirror mount is tiny but downwashing for the same purpose. There's a small vertical part sticking out where they meet, suggesting there's also a tiny bit of vorticity introduced there.

Here's my best rough guess of the flow paths if it helps to visualise, light blue lines are lower flow levels and green lines go right above the mirror bracket before continuing downstream

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Regarding the latest upgrade

Paul Monaghan:

“The development of the solution we brought here to Japan was done even before we ran in Bahrain in pre-season testing.”

“When you have to provide a cooling inlet, it would be stupid to put it where you have little pressure to work with.” “So we tried to perfect the position of the inlets where we find the highest pressures to make the cooling of the radiators more efficient”.

[basti313]

The mirror mount is tiny but downwashing for the same purpose.

I do not think this is related. The downwash was there before, right?
I think it is simply beneficial to have some downwash in this area as Merc showed...with having the aero on the rear in mind. So I would exclude this effect from the inlet discussion.

The new winglet promotes a bit of outwash in order to bring more clean air to the inlet, just like any typical winglet... .... There's a small vertical part sticking out where they meet, suggesting there's also a tiny bit of vorticity introduced there.

Yes, perfect picture. This is also what I have in mind for the right winglet. The winglet straightens the flow towards the inlet to get more flow/pressure inside. Judging the past I would not be surprised if the vortex is even the major tweak to make this efficient by sealing off a bad influence on the sidepod flow. Classic Newey.

I think the left winglet in the picture actually works the inlet at the top of the headrest, if it would help the inlet in the picture, it would point the other direction. Is this what your left blue stripe indicates?
The left winglet also with a vortex sealing dirty air maybe from the cockpit?

[venkyhere]

Regarding the latest upgrade

Paul Monaghan:

“The development of the solution we brought here to Japan was done even before we ran in Bahrain in pre-season testing.”

“When you have to provide a cooling inlet, it would be stupid to put it where you have little pressure to work with.” “So we tried to perfect the position of the inlets where we find the highest pressures to make the cooling of the radiators more efficient”.

https://formu1a.uno/wp-content/uploads/ ... 24x576.jpg

The impression I get is that the letterbox is less narrow in the "new" , and that the red stripe sticker is located higher in the "old"

[basti313]

Regarding the latest upgrade

Paul Monaghan:

“The development of the solution we brought here to Japan was done even before we ran in Bahrain in pre-season testing.”

“When you have to provide a cooling inlet, it would be stupid to put it where you have little pressure to work with.” “So we tried to perfect the position of the inlets where we find the highest pressures to make the cooling of the radiators more efficient”.

https://formu1a.uno/wp-content/uploads/ ... 24x576.jpg

The impression I get is that the letterbox is less narrow in the "new" , and that the red stripe sticker is located higher in the "old"

I fear the inlet shape is not possible to extract from the pictures. They are taken from different angles, too much difference in the zoom and details.
Red stripe is just a sticker, I would not discuss this in terms of aero...might be just misaligned.

[Cs98]

Regarding the latest upgrade

Paul Monaghan:





https://formu1a.uno/wp-content/uploads/ ... 24x576.jpg

The impression I get is that the letterbox is less narrow in the "new" , and that the red stripe sticker is located higher in the "old"

I fear the inlet shape is not possible to extract from the pictures. They are taken from different angles, too much difference in the zoom and details.
Red stripe is just a sticker, I would not discuss this in terms of aero...might be just misaligned.

There are other pictures which show the difference much more clearly.

The removable square panel on the side of the inlet shows it very clearly. And obviously it makes complete sense that if you add a cooling slot in one place you can remove some area from elsewhere.

[zanca.racing]

Regarding the latest upgrade

Paul Monaghan:

“The development of the solution we brought here to Japan was done even before we ran in Bahrain in pre-season testing.”

“When you have to provide a cooling inlet, it would be stupid to put it where you have little pressure to work with.” “So we tried to perfect the position of the inlets where we find the highest pressures to make the cooling of the radiators more efficient”.

https://formu1a.uno/wp-content/uploads/ ... 24x576.jpg

I think that the vertical inlet has also been widened isn't it?

[Vanja #66]

I do not think this is related. The downwash was there before, right?
I think it is simply beneficial to have some downwash in this area as Merc showed...with having the aero on the rear in mind. So I would exclude this effect from the inlet discussion.

Yes, downwash mount was there before too, but looks a bit more pronounced now. Even if it's exactly the same, it still helps the inlet

I think the left winglet in the picture actually works the inlet at the top of the headrest, if it would help the inlet in the picture, it would point the other direction. Is this what your left blue stripe indicates?
The left winglet also with a vortex sealing dirty air maybe from the cockpit?

I used the left-most blue stripe to illustrate how I see that small portion of air will end up going inside the cockpit along the headrest

[basti313]

Yes, downwash mount was there before too, but looks a bit more pronounced now. Even if it's exactly the same, it still helps the inlet

Yes, effect is surely there, otherwise the winglets would not make sense. But I think they positioned the inlet according to this flow and not redesigned the wing to aim for the inlet like they did with the winglet.

I think the left winglet in the picture actually works the inlet at the top of the headrest, if it would help the inlet in the picture, it would point the other direction. Is this what your left blue stripe indicates?
The left winglet also with a vortex sealing dirty air maybe from the cockpit?

I used the left-most blue stripe to illustrate how I see that small portion of air will end up going inside the cockpit along the headrest
[/quote]
Ok. But what do you think about the shape? The portion above the mirror mount looks to me like a pure vortex generator.

There are other pictures which show the difference much more clearly.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKW5cLHaUAA ... name=small
The removable square panel on the side of the inlet shows it very clearly. And obviously it makes complete sense that if you add a cooling slot in one place you can remove some area from elsewhere.

Thanks, much better. But also here the light may falsify our interpretation. The clear edge on the Suzuka picture is missing the light in the Oz picture, thus I would not give too much on the intersection.

Furthermore I think the main thing on this picture is not the size as they anyways work the flow and effect internally. But I think the interesting part is how they changed the corner shape to reduce drag or get the air more clean to the back of the car.

[ringo]

There are many reasons, It is not seeing the same air speed and flow quality there as the frontal opening due to its position on the upper surface, it's shape, and the fact it doesn't have an upper lip ramming air into it; to put it simply.

It's basically located in a very dirty flow area, adjacent to high stagnation about the cockpit and halo mounts. This area is already draggy, and placing that inlet there will in fact bleed off some of the wake coming out of the cockpit and

But that's not where 99% of the cockpit losses go. Scarbs posted a clip of CFD from Alpine recently and it's a perfect visual tool in this case



I've taken a few screenshots and placed them in the right "direction" since the clip Alpine released is played in reverse

https://i.ibb.co/FbxLhMN/ALPINE-CFD.png

You can see circled in white the suspension losses coming towards sidepod inlet. This tells us purple shows minor and unavoidable losses in this CFD plot. On images 2 and 3 we see the boundary layer losses in purple around the bodywork in this whole area. And then on image 4 we see basically no losses where RB placed the new inlet (circled in yellow) and practically all of the cockpit losses go above the shoulders, circled in red.

This is the purpose of the flat shoulder geometry RB, Alpine and McLaren introduced in 2022 and why Mercedes went a step beyond with sausage shoulders last year. When you think about it, even without CFD it's clear cockpit losses will go out the back, there are side walls for driver's head protection preventing the air spilling out the side.

Well this cross section is not the best view in my opinion. Also the colours may be showing the wrong thing for this investigation. If its cP it wont be very useful. But it's what we have.7

If there is a surface map or flow trajectory of energy or speed that would be more helpful.

It's not a matter of where 99% of the losses go. As that's one extreme that doesnt look on the detail.

This is a better view.



I think if we look on where that upper hole was place beside the headrest and keep in mind the great wall gullies on the RB20.. it's indicative that the flow there is already relatively turbulent compared to whats going on under the sidepods. At the undercut you have more management needed to deal with as much as wakes as possible coming from upstream.
On the shoulder up top, the driver helment and outspills from the cockpit and nothing else remarkable downstream.
My evidence is not very strong as limited cfd imagery is online.

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not new this weekend

[matteosc]

https://i.imgur.com/FC7Kji3.jpeg

Very interesting picture. Is this part of the new floor or was it there already? Any idea of the purpose/effect?

[SICK AL SPEEDSHOP]

saw it on insta now but no idea how to share stuff here. looks like it's for cooling electronics or the battery.

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new vertical winglet added on Friday which wasn't present on Thursday pitlane practice

[Silent Storm]