Got Wings??

[wingman]

Anyone showing up with aero packages to Detroit this year???

[wingman]

Anyone showing up with aero packages to Detroit this year???

[tommy]

no

[Dominic Venieri]

perhaps

www.formularpi.com (http://www.formularpi.com)

[Richard Lewis]

Does a 2 degree rake to the floor count?

-------------------------
UVIC Formula SAE Team
http://members.shaw.ca/drax77/Formula%20UVic%20Sig.jpg
http://uvic.fsae.ca

[Lyn Labahn UW-Madison]

Come on, everyone knows wings are worthless in Formula SAE http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Bring on the Flames, and no wings on the car this year for UW-Madison.

2002/2003 Team Leader
Best overall average finish of the new millenium http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Michael Jones]

I dunno...flames are so 2002.

No wings yet. Our prototypical ideas need work before they're ready for prime time, and no one took the project on this year, so.

---
Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[MikeWaggoner at UW]

Wings are for airplanes and hondas... No wings for WWU.

Western Washington University FSAE
dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae

[Bam Bam]

NO STRAIGHT MAN PUTS FLAMES ON ANYTHING!!!!!!

[Michael Jones]

Here's a great wing for you. Guy parks in front of my apt. sometimes. What's wrong with this picture?

http://www.yafle.com/wing.jpg

..and while it may be debatable that no straight man puts flames on anything, only closeted homosexuals go out of their way to make denigrating remarks about it.

---
Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[Lyn Labahn UW-Madison]

By flames, I meant inflamatory comments from the Aero zeolots, not that our car would have flames on it. Sorry to dissapoint!

2002/2003 Team Leader
Best overall average finish of the new millenium http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[jack]

well the wing might be a little off, but he probably has those really cool looking LED windshield squirters right?? then he has got to be a badass....

JACK
www.etec.wwu.edu (http://www.etec.wwu.edu)

[Scott Wordley]

Maybe he just drives around in reverse a lot.

Regards,

Scott Wordley & Roan Lyddy Meaney
Monash FSAE Wingmen
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae

[Michael Jones]

What's funny is a friend of mine has the same car...it could probably use some downforce, even in normal cornering conditions. I don't want to know how it performs with a reverse wing.

---
Cornell Racing
http://fsae.mae.cornell.edu

[Garbo]

... But EVERYONE knows that the sharp edge cuts the wind better :-)

Actually, isn't a wing running backwards the basis for the NACA laminar sections (64, 66 series)? Maybe he's trying to delay separation, to reduce drag at the expense of lift, or some other sort of tainted logic...

g

[Gareth]

I would have thought it was for "awesome power"

[dr47watson]

It's to keep the rear end light so he can perform the j-hook cobra slide turn, fools. Yo, he owns all our stupid go karts.

Rich

[gug]

i think the photo above really proves that down under is actually on top of the world, and its really all you Americans that are upside down.

now to contradict myself, here is a spoiler designed by architects.

sadly, they are Australian . on the up-side, this boat proves that achitects dont have a clue, as it sank when it was launched. too heavy.
http://www.dreamboatel.com.au/images/OnRiver2.jpg

"I come from a land down under,
Where beer does flow and men chunder"

[Garbo]

Don't be silly, Gareth, that's what Racing stipes do! Honestly, what do they teach at UW?

[nocones2003]

I guess wings are worthless in FSAE... but didn't the winner of the autocross last year have aero? I wonder how much they would have won by if they dropped that weight?

[woollymoof]

If you had seen how Monash stuck to the ground last year in FSAE-A you wouldn't be saying that.

[gug]

we are investigating wings ourselves, but the resistance that everybody gives me is amazing! straight off the mark, people say "with an average speed of 40kph, there is no way wings could work". in that case, every bloody remote control glider in the world should crash! do some research before you discount wings. believe me, top teams like Cal Poly and Monash dont run wings just to look good. now, to make everyones life a bit easier, Monash have posted their data on wings:

Monash post (http://fsae.com/eve/forums?q=Y&a=tpc&s=763607348&f=125607348&m=2536074991&p=3)

this is some pretty solid evidence that wings work. the only consideration is if its worth your time or not to develop them.

sorry for turning what was a pretty funny post into a rant, but everyone else seems to think that its "piss off gug" day today, and its getting on my nerves.

"I come from a land down under,
Where beer does flow and men chunder

[Scott Wordley]

Thanks for the nice comments boys.

We're actually pretty busy building our new 2003 wings right now which means two things.

- We will soon have a spare set (2002) which we are considering loaning/hiring/selling to some Aussie teams who might be keen to sample a bit a of unsprung downforce without the pain of making wings.

- Also our new wings will be made from moulds this year which means we can spit them out ad nauseum once their done. We have a whole heap of second years who can lay composites and nothing to do for half a year so that may keep them busy.

Don't forget that they'd come with the most comprehensive wind tunnel testing data thus seen in FSAE.

Anyone interested?
What do you think (hypothetically) teams would be prepared to pay for a complete set of multielement glass or carbon wings?

Regards,

Scott Wordley & Roan Lyddy Meaney
Monash FSAE Wingmen
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae

[woollymoof]

Depends how much sponsorship they have

[nocones2003]

You obviously did not catch my sarcasm in that comment.

[woollymoof]

Nope, sorry. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Eric Wort]

Naw, it wasn't the weight that hurt UTA. I believe the drag from their aero made them run out of fuel during the endurance. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Eric Wort
UIUC Formula SAE (http://dilbert.cen.uiuc.edu/soc/sae/formula/)

[Scott Wordley]

I'm guessing theres more sarcasm in the previous post but I do remember hearing that they accidentally ran their autocross engine map in enduro causing them to chew through the fuel quicker.

Regards,

Scott Wordley & Roan Lyddy Meaney
Monash FSAE Wingmen
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae

[Disco]

Scott and Roan,
Not that RMIT are intersting in running wings, particularly because we are using the smaller engine, but I'm intersted to know how much you guys think the wings are worth to sell/hire out??

Kind Regards
Steve Price
RMIT Racing

[Scott Wordley]

I have no idea really, say $100 for a day hire.
The problem is no car without wings is going to have enough clearance under the nose to run a front wing. Its easy enough to mount the rear one to the top wish bones but with out the front wing the balance will be screwed.

To sell... again not much idea but maybe in the order of AUS$4-6000. Thats multielement carbon wings and carbon nomex endplates with wind tunnel testing data. I think material costs alone totalled around $2K. Pretty steep I guess...

Regards,

Scott Wordley & Roan Lyddy Meaney
Monash FSAE Wingmen
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae

[Disco]

Interesting. Yeah it's a pretty tough call that. Although they are proven (or atleast with the rest of your cars set-up), cause I do believe it was incredible quick last year, I don't believe that any team would pay that sort of money. You said there was about $2000 worth of material. At the end of the day, a team could still make them for that amount and save the rest of the money by doing the work themselves.

[gug]

gotta admit, not much chance of us buying the pre-made wings, and hiring them would suck cause you need practise in an aero car. but how much would you consider selling the designs for? i think my team will be getting sponsored carbon fiber (and should be able to get kevlar weave as well, for the whole james bond style bulletproof fsae car!), so we could probably make them ourselves for cheap. i understand that monash put a large amount of effort into designing the wings, but could you put a figure on the man-hours? (just making sure its worth the money http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif )
this is sorta setting off alarms bells in that small, repressed part of my mind that deals with morals and ethics. although i guess its actaully better than just using someone elses wings, where do you draw the line between getting help and someone building your car for you? ill have to talk to someone in the team with morals, im sure there must be at least one person. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

"I come from a land down under,
Where beer does flow and men chunder"

[karter]

For the experienced wing users, a question... How do you set up your car (tune with the wing), do you first run without it and balance the mechanical aspects (front/rear roll couple distribution) then add in the areo???? or do the whole package together (rely on driver to identify slow speed vs areo handeling problems)

Stephen

[Scott Wordley]

Not sure how everone else does it but last year we started by balancing the car without wings.
As that was the first time we had had a car finished early enough to tune properly we learnt a lot in that respect.

We then tuned the aero in the tunnel and set the car up for max downforce with as good aero balance as we could guesstimate as its impossible to properly quantify the contribution from a front wing in ground effect unless you have a moving floor tunnel (we don't).

We then used our prior knowledge of the car setup to make minor adjustments to the cars balance once we put the wings on. I didn;t spend a huge amount of time in the car but I think that downforce can gloss over basic car setup problems if you are tuning from driver feel alone. Specially if your drivers aren't used to driving downforce cars (probably 99% of us).

Gug, with respect to how much work we've put into the aero design I'd estimate about 1000 post grad man hours on CFD (3 people working over the last 2 years) plus 50 hours of wind tunnel time to date with double amount that planned this year. The going rate is usually $2000 an hour).

Results like this don;t come easily
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae/monashcfd.jpg

Have a talk to me at the site review and I'll see if we can help you out with some profiles. We'd love to see you fellas with some cool wings.

I also agree with you disco, you could make them for the material cost alone IF you knew what you were doing and IF you had all the moulds. These are weeks and weeks of work in themselves not to mention a whole lot of chop strand and resin. But before you can even make moulds you need plugs to mould off, and of course these need to be dimensionally accurate, nice and rigid and finished to a mirror shine (read: more work). But I guess thats the easy part having learnt CFD and designed the profiles in the first place. In that respect the decision to build wings is based on more than just the cost of the materials for the final parts.

I'm going through the slog for the second time now but believe me, it is worth the effort.

Regards,

Scott Wordley & Roan Lyddy Meaney
Monash FSAE Wingmen
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae

[This message was edited by Scott & Roan on May 25, 2003 at 12:07 AM.]

[Bob Wright]

We tuned our car without wings first to get a basic idea of what worked for the tyres (its amazing how different the set-up is for different tyres). Then we stuck our wings on late one night while still testing on formula ford tyres and found that the rear wheels were glued to the ground from low-mid second gear onward (you cant get our car unstuck in third gear, it just goes where you point it!). Anyway we found the car really came good with a low percentage front roll resistance (45-50%), which meant we were a bit low in % front aero.
Tuning without the wings and then comparing is the easiest way of telling what your f/r aero balance is like if you dont have the data logging setup or rolling floor wind tunnel to test what youve got.
If we take the wings off our car and left the sway bars alone the car has serious oversteer, and that can really help in hairpin corners. At high speed our wings sort our balance into a nice neutral/ understeer.

Anyway, talking to some people in professional open wheel racing %front roll and % fornt aero are the two things you want to keep constant to make your car work, but you probably wont find that balance without the wings- it will be a different car and need differnet setup.

Test with and without wings anyway. The results you get are more about training your driver to feel whats doing what- and its great fun http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_cool.gif

Bob Wright
Monash University
Australia

[MikeWaggoner at UW]

Regarding fuel economy. What kind of Cd are you getting from the front wing and the rest of the body? It seems like most FSAE cars are for crap (Cd .6?) due to design limitations, and I wonder if you could get positive benefits from side tunnels and a front wing and no rear wing with limited negative fuel economy effects.

Western Washington University FSAE
dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae

[imajerk]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MikeWaggoneratWWU:
Regarding fuel economy. What kind of Cd are you getting from the front wing and the rest of the body? It seems like most FSAE cars are for crap (Cd .6?) due to design limitations, and I wonder if you could get positive benefits from side tunnels and a front wing and no rear wing with limited negative fuel economy effects.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's possible to run an FSAE car with: front wing and diffuser/side tunnels with minimum drag; but I think there might be an issue with balance. One might get a bit too much oversteer if the front wing is too aggressive. I would just try a flat under body with a small diffuser - that would help a bit with practically no drag (and could clean up airflow behind the car (reducing drag). I'm guessing such a set-up would result in a little understeer, but I prefer understeer to oversteer. It's also difficult to tell how effective a tunnel or diffuser is without lots of testing, if you don't have a moving floor wind tunnel (which very few people have – especially full scale).

[Al]

The issue with this set-up would be balance. In order to avoid the oversteer generated by having no rear wing you would need to generate downforce (from the floor) quite significantly aft of the cofg of the car. Most floors give their centre of pressure near enough to the cars cofg. Or you could trim out the front wing massively, but that would ruin the benefit of having the wing.

Look at the late ground effect F1 cars and you will see that most of them actually ran with tiny front wings but reasonably large rear wings. This is because the floor was producing it's downforce ahead of the CofG and the front wing was often used simply to control the airflow into the diffuser.

So I would hazard a guess that the only way of producing the downforce from the floor far enough back would be an extremely long (central) diffuser extending a long way behind the rear wheels and having a flat floor from around the cockpit back. But then you lose floor plan area and hence downforce.

The other thing is that the diffuser is not easily adjustable. Therefore the only trimming option you have is the front wing.

Would certainly improve the fuel economy though, which is an issue we are still concerned about.

[wingman]

Hey everyone,

search the archives for wings ion this forum,

there was a ton of good info, links, etc... on the thread from last September

And for the record, the question is not "do wings work".....but rather, will they work for you... You need a minimum of 1-2 months to properly tune a "prototype" before you could see the added improvement from wings, then another month to tune the wings to make them work correctly....

as for lift distribution, and tuning I agree with your recommendations on tuning, since no matter what you wind up with a 40/60 distribution at best..... and for cars with full diffusers, the wings are used mostly for trimming purposes, as was previously alluded too.....


PS the Detroit judges are still anti wing....

[MikeWaggoner at UW]

I guess the other part I was getting at with having a front wing only was shaping it and the diffusers (side) to limit airflow around the wheels while producing some downforce. You might be able to get downforce and even reduce Cd this way.

Western Washington University FSAE
dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae

[Charlie]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by wingman:
PS the Detroit judges are still anti wing....<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Were there not 2 winged cars out of the 14 semi-final cars? Pretty good odds to me. That's a bigger percentage than overall.

I heard more than one judge mention the winged cars and simply say they were extremely dissapointed in what the teams didn't know about the car (things that they should know to make effective use of aero).

-Charlie Ping
Auburn University FSAE
5th Overall Detroit 2003

[MercerFSAE C. Burch]

The stopwatch doesn't lie either...

Specifically talking about the UTA car, it had incredible endurance lap times even though it appeared to have an engine that wasn't quite up to the task. In the Road and Track competition the UTA car was barely getting to 53mph!

This leads me to conclude that the wings must have helped at least a little bit with those consistent 61s lap times.

I also heard a rumor from someone on another team that UTA was claiming a 1.0s improvement in lap times around a 200ft diameter skidpad. That same someone was quick to point out that our cars, even without wings, run around a skidpad of that diameter at something approaching 70mph - his point being that we don't reach those speeds in this competition.

Maybe we don't, I got to thinking, but at 70mph around a 200ft diameter skidpad that equates to around 8 seconds per lap. A one second improvement is HUGE when we're talking that kind of time interval. That is almost a .4g improvemnt in lateral acceleration. Even if the wings only contributed any real help in only the three or so fastest corners around the endurance track, I figure it would be good for at least a 1-2 second improvement in lap times. It sure wouldn't hurt if done properly.

UTA has won FSAE 7 times, the most of any team in this competition. They don't run with a full aerodynamic setup just to impress the other teams. They look at the stopwatch and see the results.

Chris
Mercer University - Drive!
Coming to an autocross course near you, May 2004!

PS - We won't have wings in 2004, if only because we don't have the time to properly do aero.

[Charlie]

I can't agree with the statement that if a team has won this competition a lot, that everything they do is for the right reasons. I think UTA has done a fantastic job, but prior sucess (without wings) don't mean the fact that they run them means I should assume wings are a must-have.

The endurance track was 'faster' this year. I don't doubt the winged cars benefitted. The question is not whether a properly done winged car will be faster in endurance. The question is, will its endurance improvement overcome the deficits in the other events.

I look forward to seeing UTA have better luck in England.

-Charlie Ping
Auburn University FSAE (http://eng.auburn.edu/organizations/SAE/AUFSAE)
5th Overall Detroit 2003
? Overall Aussie 2003. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[ODUformulaRacer]

i work in a tunnel here in the statesLangley Full Scale Tunnel (http://www.lfst.com). i have access to the tunnel to test the car but the problem is our balance does not fit the car. I was wondering how you guys test your car, is it a single plate style. Also do you any small scale model testing of the body, I have unlimit access to one. I figure for this year's we will multi element wings with a rear diffuser and side pods. I may also experiment with dive planes to fine tune the flow. Any help on how to test the car would be great. Right now it looks like i will be able to measure drag in the full scale tunnel and have to relie on the small tunnel for downforce coefficients then compare the numbers to the full scale drag numbers to determine how close the data really is.

2003 Project Manager
ODU Formula SAE

[PatClarke]

I don't think it is fair to say that UTA had a soft engine based on the speed registered in the R&T event.
Remember, this engine retired from the endurance event following a failure in the cooling system and severe overheating. The cooling system was repaired for R7T but the engine was not changed. It would be reasonable to assume that a good cooking would take the edge off any engine and I doubt the UTA engine was anywhere near as strong on Sunday as it had been on Saturday.
Also, for reasons UTA know best, they did not have their best driver in the car at R&T.

Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength

[J. Cheng]

Does anyone have photos of UTA's '03 car?

Joe

[Scott Wordley]

Hey ODU dude,

Langley is a really nice tunnel you could do some good work there.

I work in the wind tunnel at Monash University and we actually hosted the SATA conference last year for people with wind tunnels. I had a good chat with a guy from your tunnel called Eric Koster, we actually took him down to the workshop and showed him the car. He sounded pretty keen on FSAE so I'm guessing you probably know him or he's your supervisor or whatever.

Don;t see why you shouldn;t be able to measure downforce in the big tunnel. We also have the problem that the car is too small and wheelbase and track to fit our balance. For this reason we built a rig out of RHS which our car sits on to bridge the gap. It looks a little rough but you just have to make do. It obviously isn;t any good for diffusers and ground effect etc. If you go this way make sure you calibrate the rig for applied lift and drag at all corners. You will also need to run the tunnel and see what lift and drag the rig itself produces and subtract this from the results. Just assume superposition and cross your fingers.

Check out the photo at:

http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae/monashcalibrate.JPG

and read the thread called 'WINGS' there is plenty more info there too.

Good luck.

Regards,

Scott Wordley & Roan Lyddy Meaney
Monash FSAE Wingmen
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae

[Bob Wright]

Just had a look at the sight for the Aus comp this year. It looks like a pretty big track, and theres talk going round about a few fast sweeping corners. My advice is stick some bloody big wings on the car if you're coming over in december

ps. big radiators and fat tires wont hurt either, its going to be 35-40 degrees celcius and you'll murder those skinny little US tires. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_redface.gif

Bob Wright
Monash University
Australia

[wingman]

In my experience, the wings on FSAE cars (at least the ones that I developed) made the car more drivable, less twitchy, etc. In addition to increasing performance for experienced drivers, it allowed novice drivers to make LARGE improvements.....

Cal Poly has video of wind tunnel testng on their web site....not informative, but cool to look at.....by the way this was the testing that is quoted in my discussions with Scott and Roan in the wings thread from last december...

http://www.csupomona.edu/%7Efsae/video/


cheers......

[karter]

Well, I did it now!!! I realy didn't beleive that a wing was going to make a difference but, with some information from this thread and the other wings thread I built a 50" X 14" chord wing for my kart (normaly dirt speedway).... we ran on a 1/4 mile paved oval, top speed ~62MPH,,,, I was able to pick up .4 seconds per lap, and this was with no testing/wind tunnel. The kart had oversteer without the wing, with it I was able to run flat out through the turns.

I think that an FSAE car has got to be faster with than without as long as the rest of the car is properly developed.

[awhittle]

Karter

We need photos HEHE I was looking at puting wings on the autocross kart just for fun.

AW

[Sam Jowa]

To be fair Karter you should really find the difference in times when the kart has the same handling characteristics with and without the wing. I have no doubt the wing could be beneficial at those speeds, but in this case it is a possibility that the kart was faster because it was neutral with the wing. Take the wing off and try one or more of the following to neutralize the kart:

Adding cross
More left side weight
Less stagger
Take away some axle lead
Less right front caster
Softer Right rear Tire
Less Front weight
More positive camber on the right front
Move the left rear in

And the list can continue... That's what I love about racing there's never one straight forward answer to anything!!!!

My feeling, which has NO data to back it up, is that a wing on a FSAE car under driving conditions provides very little help. I think the cornering speeds at pontiac are way too slow. I think time would be much better spent on other areas of the car. Again this is only my gut feeling.

SJ

[karter]

I run in Yamaha Heavy (370#, kart and driver), due to my being brontosapian, I usualy scale in at 395#, stager is ~3/8", 55% rear, 57% left, up to 62% cross, can't change the rear or left much more, don't own a softer LR, have the lead at 0, might try less RF castor, looser rear bumper, tighter front bumper ...... I think its a case of tooo many hamburgers, tooooo heavy. The only other karts that didn't complain about grip have wedge bodywork .....

[ODUformulaRacer]

hey guys as far as downforce goes i believe there is a small window of improvement for these cars. however i believe that there is a huge area of drag that can be eliminated through the use of wings and underbody work. plus things such as splitters are free downforce with no real drag increase.

2003 Project Manager
ODU Formula SAE

[Bob Wright]

If theres not enough airspeed to worry about downforce, why do you think lowering drag is going to do anything?

Bob Wright
Monash University
Australia
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~fsae