Ooooo,
my mistake then.
Should read a bit on aerodynamics first.
If that’s the case, they just need to be pointed exactly in the correct direction, right?
How do you find that?
Brendan
Looks good but I guess it needs so needs to be strong to create any meaningful effect?. And is the angle of attack important? or the exact position of the vortices?
Also not sure what pc plod would have to say about slitting joe publics achilles tendon
I’ve stood a 1Kg bag of sugar on it, and it deflected by about 3mm.
LOL! Colin Chapman would be proud of us!
The angle of attack is probably fairly important, but I suppose you can only get it right if you have access to a wind tunnel. I’ve gone for the easy option of following the joint between the clam and the splitter. This obviously means you don’t need any extra hole drilling.
What’s wrong with using sugar for a bit of extra downforce
Hi Brendan, I think the dive planes look good. The trick is to get the things to work though. I don’t know what book you have but the best one I have read is called ‘Race car Aerodynamics: designing for speed’ by Joseph Katz (ISBN 0-8376-0142-8). You are welcome to borrow it if you like. Reading books will help you get an idea of the theory of how things work but what you need to do to actually get them to work is test. If you can’t get access to a wind tunnel then you really need to make a number of different designs and get down to a race track to do back to back tests and log down the top speed achieved, cornering speeds and lap times to see whether they are working. My opinion is that a horizontal splitter will be far more effective on the Exige as it doesn�t create much drag. This is important when we only have a couple of hundred horsepower. I worked in a wind tunnel for a small amount of time and one thing I learnt is that the theory doesn�t necessarily work and the most effective way to improve the aero is to test as many different bits as possible, it really is a bit of a black art. Good luck, I�m really interested to hear how you get on
Here are some pics of various solutions that I have seen:
Thanks for the advice Randy. Thing is, I’m not a racer, and I only do maybe a couple of track days a year. And my driving’s not good enough to produce consistent results anyway. I’m not really taking this thing too seriously; it was just something to do for a couple of hours. The plan was that they might look good, and maybe they’d offer some small benefit as well. Pretty much the same story as the Edwards’ diffuser.
If anybody wants to test them (if I actually bother to finish them), they’re most welcome.
Cool pictures Randy. The Elise GT1’s dive planes look pretty similar to mine. I knew I’d been influenced by something.
If you are after looks then you have certainly hit the nail on the head, they look great. Anything that makes the car look more like a GT1 has to be a good thing in my book.
From that picture of the GT1, an Edwards front ‘lip’ and Brendan ‘dive planes’ look quite promising!
Ian
I was thinking the same thing Ian. I reckon it would look really good if the Edwards’ ‘lip’ was finished in carbon to match the dive planes.
I’m also considering making some larger, carbonfibre end plates for the rear wing. I’d make them in a teardrop shape very much like the ones on the GT1.