Virgin Racing: No Wind Tunnel

[TorqueWrench]

Alright, figured this would peak some interest here at FSAE. Virgin Racing reveled today that its car will be track tested in February without having ever seen the inside of a wind tunnel. Seems their technical director, Nick Wirth, is pushing CFD and feels it is so good physical testing is not needed.

Now I understand them trying to do it on a tiny budget compared to their competitors, but really? I am all for CFD as anyone on my team would tell you, but I would still expect to see some sort of wind tunnel testing for a car competing at this level. Our competition stresses physical testing and Virgin Racing seems to be running in the opposite direction.

Figured I would see what you guys thought of this. Full article is on Autosport's website. I would link to it, but I don't want to have to wait for it to be approved.

[TorqueWrench]

Alright, figured this would peak some interest here at FSAE. Virgin Racing reveled today that its car will be track tested in February without having ever seen the inside of a wind tunnel. Seems their technical director, Nick Wirth, is pushing CFD and feels it is so good physical testing is not needed.

Now I understand them trying to do it on a tiny budget compared to their competitors, but really? I am all for CFD as anyone on my team would tell you, but I would still expect to see some sort of wind tunnel testing for a car competing at this level. Our competition stresses physical testing and Virgin Racing seems to be running in the opposite direction.

Figured I would see what you guys thought of this. Full article is on Autosport's website. I would link to it, but I don't want to have to wait for it to be approved.

[Stocky Fast 1]

You make a good point. The only thing I could see is that the professionals at the F1 level are a lot better at acurately modeling in the cfd software that thier predictions are much more precise. Yet, as you say, at the F1 level you would expect some physical testing in the windtunnel. Unless, they plan to rely soley on the track data.

[TorqueWrench]

Oh yeah, no doubt their software is more accurate and they are much better at running the programs than we are.

Due to the limited testing time from the in season testing ban, I see this as putting them at a disadvantage. They will start their physical testing in February when the testing ban is lifted where as everyone else has already started in the wind tunnels.

I guess only time will tell...

[jd74914]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Stocky Fast 1:
You make a good point. The only thing I could see is that the professionals at the F1 level are a lot better at acurately modeling in the cfd software that thier predictions are much more precise. Yet, as you say, at the F1 level you would expect some physical testing in the windtunnel. Unless, they plan to rely soley on the track data. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think precise is the operative word. While such parameters like y+, etc can be optimized and all sorts of continuity conserved, I can't effectively see how you can consider your model truly validated without a physical test. The results might repeat themselves with little variation, but how can accuracy be assessed. From my perspective, track testing doesn't seem to afford the same validation potential as wind tunnel testing because of the non-compensated variables.

I still find it really hard to believe that they haven't even put a scale model in a smaller tunnel to validate models. It just doesn't make sense for the amount of money they are spending overall.

[RacingManiac]

To be fair to Wirth, this is similar to the approach they did to the Acura LMP1 car for ALMS last year. They boast last year to be able to throw CFD part directly onto the vehicle dynamic model, and use an actual driver in the loop to simulate the effect of their change in realtime. Though that is in ALMS and the level of R&D is such that I don't think they are pushed as hard and to the same degree as they will be in F1....

[JR @ CFS]

The truth is in the pudding. Let's wait for March to see. Wirth is no slouch and his company sells/prides itself on its Engineering approach and are held in very high regard within the UK Auto industry (and further afield, but I talk from my own experience). I suspect in the future we will see a lot more teams doing this.

[JR @ CFS]

Ironic this given what I wrote above. I was just having a chat with a colleague who use to manage Aero at an F1 team and he said;

"they have a 'get out of jail free card' for this year because they don't need to perform well being a 1st year team. They are currently in discussions to buy Toyota's chassis rights."

[TorqueWrench]

Haha. There has been a good amount of rumors floating around about them trying to get that chassis. It probably helps that they also have all their funding secured for at least this year already.

[TorqueWrench]

Figured I would throw up here that USF1 announced this morning that their car would never see a wind tunnel this year either.

Taken from Autosport.com:
"I noticed the other day that Nick Wirth issued a press release about the new Virgin F1 car being entirely designed on CFD – Computational Fluid Dynamics (rather than in the wind tunnel)," he said.

"The same thing applies to our car, although we see this as a logical process for a new team rather than something about which to be particularly excited. There’s no doubt, though, that the rhythm of life is now different, having worked for both Williams and Ferrari I have no hesitation in saying that."

[BenB]

Even if they don't do any physical testing I think these stories I have been hearing about this is a lot of F1 politics. They need to convince the FIA that they only spend a certain amount of money because of the budget caps next year.

The less testing they convince the FIA they are doing the easier it is to obscure how much they are actually spending.

I know of a few instances where several of the F1 teams have bought a bunch of new equipment this year that they knew they would need to replace in over the next few years just so they don't have to report it to the F1 officials.

[AxelRipper]

their website is actually completely up now if anyone is interested. I would post a link, but google is easier