Mercedes AMG F1 W03

[elf341]

Doesn't seem to be attached to main plane of rear wing... by design?

[Chuckjr]

Fantastic to see Merc doing this!!! Really hope this makes them competitive. Would love to see a Schumacher victory!

[Ferraripilot]

clearly McLaren still has more sidepod volume cut out then Mercedes, creating a much larger undercut.

I disagree. Mclaren's 'bulge' for the EBD contours to their venting louvres inboard of the exhaust exit and the Mclaren system- while it is very tidy- is not as compact as the Mercedes system strictly because W03 has smaller and lower sidepods in general with a more substantial undercut at the front, and their new EBD does not affect the overall line of the sidepods. W03s EBD is just a bump of an exit, done, the rear of the sidepods swoops down towards it, then cleanly goes back to it's intended design, whilst the Mclaren has the entire rear portion of the sidepods dedicated to flow work around the exhaust exit making their EBD and sidepods look far more volumous, which they are but not nearly like F2012 which are a rather giant affair by comparison to either.

[mantikos]

Doesn't seem to be attached to main plane of rear wing... by design?

No, at this point they are just testing the fluidic switch that controls which pipe the airflow goes into by speed, this is the tuning part. They seem to have confidence in the design of the rear wing needed to make this work.

[Timstr]

Doesn't seem to be attached to main plane of rear wing... by design?

No, at this point they are just testing the fluidic switch that controls which pipe the airflow goes into by speed, this is the tuning part. They seem to have confidence in the design of the rear wing needed to make this work.

Not so sure about that.
The purpose is disrupting the flow on the underside of the the wing so that it detaches.
It's quite possible that this will be the final setup, blowing the underside of the wing without being connected to it.

[mantikos]

Doesn't seem to be attached to main plane of rear wing... by design?

No, at this point they are just testing the fluidic switch that controls which pipe the airflow goes into by speed, this is the tuning part. They seem to have confidence in the design of the rear wing needed to make this work.

Not so sure about that.
The purpose is disrupting the flow on the underside of the the wing so that it detaches.
It's quite possible that this will be the final setup, blowing the underside of the wing without being connected to it.

I would put this somewhere in between improbable and impossible. It will connect to the wing.

[dren]

No, this is how it works. The passive DRS cannot attach to the wing and blow out any slots, the rules ban it. This version, just like the Lotus version, will blow a stream of air to disrupt and disconnect the flow under the rear wing at speed thus stalling part of the wing. It doesn't have the same overall effectiveness as the old F-duct since it doesn't cover the full wing length.

I do expect this to work well for Mercedes since it was rumored their old F-duct was passive at times.

[mantikos]

No, this is how it works. The passive DRS cannot attach to the wing and blow out any slots, the rules ban it. This version, just like the Lotus version, will blow a stream of air to disrupt and disconnect the flow under the rear wing at speed thus stalling part of the wing. It doesn't have the same overall effectiveness as the old F-duct since it doesn't cover the full wing length.

I do expect this to work well for Mercedes since it was rumored their old F-duct was passive at times.

http://scarbsf1.com/blog1/2012/09/01/lo ... -analysis/

The Lotus system too blows the air along the wing, this will go all the way up to the wing, at this height the outlet will shake enough to make the flow uncontrollable.

[dren]

What flow uncontrollable? This duct looks to blow straight up at the underside of the wing. Carbon fiber can be made to be fairly rigid.

[mantikos]

What flow uncontrollable? This duct looks to blow straight up at the underside of the wing. Carbon fiber can be made to be fairly rigid.

Well, with that much gap you are dealing with the airflow coming up from the tube getting affected by the airflow coming perpedicular to it. Also, with the wing shaking during normal course, the airflow from the tube would move around a lot.
Or maybe, I'll have to eat my words.

[Ferraripilot]

So, say the flow to the main rear wing element is is 'tuned' to be disrupted once 'X' pressure in the tube is realized which could theoretically be tuned according to each track. As an example I'll say above 120mph this tube disrupts pressure and causes the rear wing to lose perhaps 3% (?) downforce thus aiding straight line acceleration due to less drag. These engineers must see a slight advantage in using this system, but I'm not seeing more than maybe a tenth or two advantage. Then again, this season is all about a tenth here and there isn't it.

The DRS flap reduces right around 25% drag when it's open and has a rough benefit of 1.500 during qualifying depending on the circuit? So if this Lotus 'device' removes 3% *only when* a certain pressure is realized about a certain speed this means that 3% DF loss happens only during the amount of time spent above a particular speed. If the 3% were a constant whenever DRS were simply activated, I'm seeing .180 as the benefit for this system if my extremely rough conjecture is somewhat correct. One can safely assume the benefit would probably be approx half of that .180 being the actual benefit due to the simple fact that the pressure must be realized before the system does anything.

I suppose there is a mathematical formula showing the design of the pressure tube hole and at what pressures flow is realized. The trick will be in knowing when one can afford to lose the DF thus take advantage of the system.

[Timstr]

Not noticed as the focus is on the back, but they tested a front with vertical fences:
http://f1zoom.fx1.nl/?year=2012&race=ma ... 110&full=1

[elf341]

nice! very Lotus-like!

[Ganxxta]

Thank god [-o< they are finally using sensors.

What the f... took them so long? Real world data is crucial.

[Dragonfly]

I don't remember ever seeing the car with so many hang-on sensor arrays. Does it mean they finally need fresh data to feed to their CFD systems and simulator? Or simply to compare field data with the virtual models?