flynfrog wrote:Ringo,
I am not seeing really any ellipses in any of the pictures you are posting. Could paint an outline on them. Maybe Im just not understanding you correctly.
The elliptical wings was used on WWII era planes from a top view. For an airfoil shape an ellipse is not a bad front third of the airfoil but you really need a longer and sharper tail to get a clean separation.
Also an ellipse is not the most aerodynamic shape. That depends on the speed and viscosity.
You wont see a complete ellipse, only segments of ellipses.
Look on the elements of the front wing, the top view, and underneath if you can.
Those curves are not for good looks. They're actually ellipse segments.
It hard to see because the ellipses have really big axis dimensions. Ferrari copied this last year at Korean GP and found much improvement in their car's handling.
It's not obvious but on my F1 design ellipses are used almost everywhere.
You wont see those curves if you are not looking for them. It's also difficult to decipher when the ellipse segments have short lengths but have huge axis dimensions.
In fact none of the design was done with style, or fashion, or for beauty. The car was done with indifference to tradition or what we know F1 cars are supposed to look like. Most designs i see are based on bias and cosmetics; no purpose behind the curvature.
Not exaggerating, but every curve on the RB7 has a purpose and is not related to any art style, bias or tradition. Most of these are defined mathematically as ellipse, straight line, or another curve; i wont say. No splines are used on the car.
Most designs have splines nowadays, and i think this is why some teams are surprised at the results they get when they move from CFD to the track. Splines tend to promote free-styling in designing and things can get less accountable as you draw. That's what i think anyway.
I have one more thing to reveal about the sidepods. You can call it the holy grail of sidepod design.
It's not anything to do with ellipses but it's there in plain sigth and none of the 2012 cars so far have it. It's on my F1 car.
As predicted there is one optimum, all teams are now converging onto redbull featurs. This last revelation with cause a mad sidepod rush for 2013. All cars will basically be the same.