Renault R31

[hecti]

Sidepod's interior... looks very strange to me

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/3517/j ... 0copie.jpg

I mean the duct feeding the radiator has a triangular shape and looks very smaller than the circular intake...

that photo and other ones show sth like this:



is the grey area hiding something ?
the black area is visible in other photos and is also intriguing (at least for me)

Thats just the inside of the body work...

[godlameroso]

I have an educated guess/theory of what they're trying to do with the exhaust. A lot of people have the misconception of exhaust being a continuous flow, only that's not true. Exhaust can be thought of more as a pulse than a flow, because the ignition of gasoline in itself is a discreet event, so to will all resulting reactions. Despite exhaust headers converging, all the converging does is line all the pulses up in a single file.

The exhaust pulse is nothing more than a high pressure shockwave, this high pressure shockwave is followed by a corresponding low pressure one. Now, your race car is traveling at say 180kph, at this point aerodynamics are doing their thing, creating a pressure differential across the car. The exhaust pulses meet this already flowing air, and by process of least resistance separate. The high pressure shock waves are pulled upwards, along with the rest of the high pressure flow created by the upper part of the chassis, while the low pressure ones are pulled underneath the car along the low pressure zone.

By placing the exhaust pulses in the stream of air, you have created a virtual wing, by using the front wing, end plates, and to some extent the turning vanes and nose.

Pretty clever....if that was their aim.

It would also explain the funky exhaust notes we hear, possibly trying to exploit the pressure differential through exhaust tuning.

[Pierrauto]

If it rain in Belbourne, what will be the performance gain by the exhaust gasses cleaning the asphalt for the rear tires? We can even think about the marbles on dry asphalt...

[manchild]

+ warming up asphalt in front rear tyres for the better grip, especially during races with cold weather.

That also means that they might be able to use hard compound without loosing performance as the rest of the field, and have less pitstops.

[Neno]

It's that possible?!

[Holm86]

When the car is moving the exhaust will not warm up any asphalt or dry any asphalt if its raining!

[mith]

I don't think it will have any effect. Most of the tests were held in quite cold conditions and we didn't see anything as such appearing.

[Pierrauto]

Maybe not drying the asphalt but at least removing excess wather in front of the rear tire. The most important improvement may come at the start of the race where the exhaust gasses can dry the surface in front of rear tire for extra traction...

[manchild]

I had in mind dry conditions when I added + comment.

Tyre on working temperature and layer of rubber on tarmac form a bond on molecular level. It is constant temporary gluing.

Now, think what happens when exhaust pre-heats that layer of rubber, just before rear wheel reaches it. It becomes even stronger bond, since the difference in temperature of tyre and layer and reduces as former rises.

On top of all that, the slower the corner - the more heated layer becomes, just when all the grip in the world is needed.

Forgot to mention start of the race. The exhaust will nicely warm some area in front of rear tyres, and as mentioned by others before, warm them up in warm up lap without need for spinning or extreme zigzagging that wears them off.

[xpensive]

Wrong thread, sorry!

If "Renault" is seriously and conciously, injecting their xhausts under the sidepods from the front edge, boy, they're playing around with Bernoulli big-time.

Typically, all you ever do around those sidepods is to make the speed under them higher than overer them, basic stuff.

delta p = rho * (v^2 - v1^2) / 2; Then the downforce will obviously follow as delta p times xposed area.

But that simple formula always had the condition of the same density (rho) on both sides, if you begin to meddle with that, at least I don't have a clue, but perhaps the CFD people at Enstone does?

[Neno]

I don't think it will have any effect. Most of the tests were held in quite cold conditions and we didn't see anything as such appearing.

cold conditions are not the same like raining or snow. in your vocabular cold only means lower temperature's. but is significantly that lotus renault's top times are from Jerez and Valencia where temperatures were significantly lower from the regular, and they didn't have any problems with warm-up tyers.

i think we need to wait some raining race's and see what car have good balance, traction and speed on wet's. last year that was red bull, and red bull was the fastest car.

[godlameroso]

Wrong thread, sorry!

If "Renault" is seriously and conciously, injecting their xhausts under the sidepods from the front edge, boy, they're playing around with Bernoulli big-time.

Typically, all you ever do around those sidepods is to make the speed under them higher than overer them, basic stuff.

delta p = rho * (v^2 - v1^2) / 2; Then the downforce will obviously follow as delta p times xposed area.

But that simple formula always had the condition of the same density (rho) on both sides, if you begin to meddle with that, at least I don't have a clue, but perhaps the CFD people at Enstone does?

I believe they want some flow to go under the car as well as around the side pod, if you look at the pic on the previous page you can see the exhaust aims somewhat sideways and down.

[ringo]

Sidepod's interior... looks very strange to me

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/3517/j ... 0copie.jpg

I mean the duct feeding the radiator has a triangular shape and looks very smaller than the circular intake...

that photo and other ones show sth like this:



is the grey area hiding something ?
the black area is visible in other photos and is also intriguing (at least for me)

Thats just the inside of the body work...

looked like a shadow to me.

[zgred]

[Robbobnob]

I wonder how much heat that exhaust gives off and how hot the drives bums get...

Reminds me of when Kimi roasted his rump in 2009 on the KERS battery pack