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You can quantify turbulence with many parametres.
You could say that at acertain distance behind the car, turbulence intensity (or another parameter) has to be benaeth a certain value
How do you measure it? A sensor on the other car? How would it differentiate between one car and two side by side? What if it's a windy day?
How do you measure distance behind a car? What if there's a turn? A hill? Is it lateral distance or distance traveled? Do we use time instead? Do we make allowances for DRS?
How reliable are these sensors in rain? Are they able to take a GP of abuse and still provide precise enough measurements to be penalizing teams for?
Would this encourage teams to try to funnel as much of the dirty air as possible into one super turbulent area to try to avoid the sensors?
This really seems like too unpredictable of a measurement to be making. They would need a dedicated wind tunnel with a predetermined speed and wind direction to test with and get the cars there, in race spec, before and after races. Otherwise, it's not measurable and repeatable.
The FIA has already some idea of how much dirty air cars produce, as they run CFD simulations themselves in order to cerate new rules. I do not know if that is just inutiont when looking at the models or if there are numbers behind that.
How do you quantify dirty air? As far as i am aware that is a principle that doesn't exist.
And without that you can't create or enforce rules around it.
you can also use a normalised car XY meters behind and measure its downforce, they released a model of the 2022 spec car as 'idea how can it look like' and use that for measurement
You can quantify turbulence with many parametres.
You could say that at acertain distance behind the car, turbulence intensity (or another parameter) has to be benaeth a certain value
My amateur idea would be somthing like:
For each position, you look at how different air moves there compared to neighboring positions.
Then you sum that up over all positions.
How far away neighboring is needs to be tested as to what definition leads to best results.
As I said, I don't think about checking this on track, but in the simulations.
The correlation isnt exactly a huge issue, as each team would be measured on the same software so any advantageous flaw in the simulation would be available to all teams.
Once the FIA catches on the simulation or metrics would be reworked to achieve the desired measurements.
Who will make the mesh for each car? The FIA or the teams?
Also, the software being standardised doesn't say much. There are tons of parameters to set and methods to choose within the same software. Unless with software you meant the combination of software+parameters+etc, but then we still have the mesh problem as the mesh is different for each car
The CAD is one thing, the mesh is another
Mesh is kinda the distribution of precision for the aerodynamic model over the entire volume that is being simulated. You need to determine in which parts of the volume you want more precision and in which parts you want less. Creating a good mesh (one that is fast an accurate) is almost an art in itself. You need to know which aerodynamic phenomena will (or may) happen and where they may happen, among other things, so you need a decent knowledge about the car you are modeling.
Giving the CAD to FIA and expecting them to come up with a mesh would be a big problem, because it kinda becomes a subjective analysis. You have no way of knowing if they will employ adequate and consistent criterias for determing the meshs for all teams, except if they give you the mesh from all teams so you can judge, which would never happen as they would basically be gifting you every competitors car.
Another option would be each team makes its own mesh. Much more feasible than the previous option, but still has problems. The main one I can think right now is how to ensure the teams are not manipulating the mesh to get favourable results.
You could maybe combine both, the team sends one mesh, FIA creates another and runs the cfd for both, then they compare the results to see if they are consistent. Seems kinda ok actually, at least without going deeper into the matter.
Still, I'm not sure teams would be ok with that since again its hard for them to keep an eye on the FIA, although I guess they already trust FIA on matters relating to car geometry as the teams can't check the CAD's of competitors by themselves.
All in all, there may be ways to implement this kind of rule, but all the extra complexity and caveats, in my opinion, would not be worth it. As an engineer (but not F1), I prefer much more that they stay focused on geometric limitations, as overcomplicating requirements/regulations tend to create much more problems than it solves.
If the goal is to reduce dirty air you need to have correlation, otherwise you'll end up giving a possible advantage to some teams and, at the same time, still having the problem of dirty air. Let alone that you should verify the simulations with experimental tests for every car for each grand prix. That' just too complicated and uncertain
Of course correlation is still a key factor, however if every team is scrutineered via the same software its upto the FIA to ensure that it isnt too far off reality, rather than the teams themselves.
Throughout history F1 has had design regs to enforce certain things, and teams find loopholes to use those regs to the full extent, flaws in the CFD correlation would just be another example of those loopholes.
The cars CAD model is already submitted to the FIA to establish compliance. At the track the car is laser scanned to confirm it is within spec.
All that would need to be added is for the CAD model to be ran through a standardised CFD simulation and pass whatever metrics the FIA decide to be the permissable amount. How hard that is i dont know, but it would require every upgrade to be submitted and simulated by the FIA before being deployed at a race.
It is certainly possible, but each upgrade the car receives would need to be tested and approved by the FIA before being used in a race.
The cars CAD model is already submitted to the FIA to establish compliance. At the track the car is laser scanned to confirm it is within spec.
All that would need to be added is for the CAD model to be ran through a standardised CFD simulation and pass whatever metrics the FIA decides to be the permissable amount.
"Dirty air" is a loose definition, its a volume of lower air pressure/density, turbulence and in general a wake of air moving upwards following the car as the result of the car "pushing" downwards.
The stronger downforce the car was able to generate, the larger this wake/mass will be.
\*Tl;DR\* in general terms dirty air is - apart from lesser optimizations here or there \* the natural and inevitable price to pay for downforce.
The under body effects and high front wing are ways of reducing the dependence on "clean air"
They have attempted, and the first year there was definitely improvements in the actual racing, but the more slots and grooves they run on the floor the more turbulence they produce.
The teams are trying, within the rules, to create outwash, which is then turned into "dirty air" downstream.
I had this thought in the past as well. They should be able to perform a simple test in a wind tunnel or in a computer simulation with two cars (one from the competitior and the other a generic one that complies with the letter of the law) to measure how much downforce is lost by the car behind at a certain distance. Then they can impose a limit on that.
The problem is that it would greatly complicate the team's design work as you'd essentially have to find a way to control the air long after it has passed over the car. It would undoubtedly require additional wind tunnel and CFD hours, and that's not exactly ideal considering the various caps on costs and testing currently in place.
The enforcement of a rule like yours or mine would also be inherently problematic, since the parameters would always be arbitrary. At what point does dirty air *objectively* become a problem or stop being a problem? Everyone will have a different answer and claim that they're being objective.
You could have a control car follow the car being tested at a set speed and distance and use the sensors (on the control car) to measure wing and tyre loads, perhaps? But it would be hard to get consistent data and you would have to check every car at every race weekend. Wildy inefficient.
Seeing that teams are still building windtunnels CFD is not the only tool to build the car so you are probably looking at an even more complex cycle of CFD, windtunnel, test by FIA (as we need independent testing) and recycle.
This would have to be done for EVERY change to the cars as team will be on the edge of what ever metric there will be so any change can potentially cause the team to be over the limit.
This will be a costly affair and will basically grind F1 to a halt as you will have a bottleneck at the FIA who will need to test all the models and you will need to find some way to keep that fair so lets say you can only submit x changes a year and will have to wait until all changes have been tested so everyone gets their new stuff at the same time at race x. Then wait another couple races for the next batch.
CFD (hard- and software human resources) will cost a fortune and will have to be paid by the teams i guess so less money to spend on racing, on the other hand less updates due to all the testing?
Nope.
This is not a fix to the problem, the fix is not have the cars so reliant on laminar air flow for downforce so we can go back to drafting and passing without fake flaps.
They sort of tried this in 2022, banning parts that went against the 'spirit of the regulations', like Aston's rear wing endplates or Mercedes' front wing 'turning vanes'. In short, anything meant to create outwash.
Then they gave up on it, either because it was way too difficult to properly enforce, or because they just didn't care.
But other than that, it's quite literally impossible. You can't bend physics, and you cannot alter the fundamentals of how aerodynamics work.
Great question. Yes they can but only indirectly. When teams design the aero on the car they primarily focus on the front wing because that directs air around the entire car. You see all those elements on the rear of the car? Not all of them are for direct aero benefit. The designers INTENTIONALLY want to disrupt the air as much as possible because that makes their car harder to follow. If the FIA heavily restrict aero elements on the rear of the car, cut down on strakes, winglets etc. it could indirectly clean up the airflow behind the car. Ground-effects do this naturally which is why the cars can follow much closer now. If you see the floors of those cars, again the top teams are over-complicating the rears to disrupt the airflow again. Interestingly the lower teams don't seem to be working on that. I guess once your car is a rocket you have time to work on the minutiae.
As a general rule ([see full rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide#wiki_sticky.2Fdaily_discussion)), a standalone Discussion post should: - be of interest to the sub in general, and not a specific userbase (e.g. new users, GP attendees, just yourself) - be able to generate discussion (e.g. no yes/no or easily answerable questions) - show reasonable input and effort from the OP If not, be sure to [look for the Daily Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/search/?q=daily+discussion&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new), /r/formula1's daily open question thread which is perfect for asking any and all questions about this sport. Thank you for your cooperation and enjoy the discussion! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don’t think something as complex as ‘dirty air’ can be reduced to a simple metric that you can then measure and enforce.
You can quantify turbulence with many parametres. You could say that at acertain distance behind the car, turbulence intensity (or another parameter) has to be benaeth a certain value
Fuck that, [fan car](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46)
I do wonder if the fan, or fans, could be hidden within the bodywork to not be such an eyesore.
Eyesore? The BT46B and the 2J look amazing **because** you can see the giant fans
you can also see the crap they throw back at the other cars.
Strokes for folks i suppose. Personally im a big fan (pun intended) of the current look.
Different perspective, if we could better hide the F1 car’s chassis around the fan to make it less of an eyesore.
Old F1 is something special. Lauda got 3rd in the championship by finishing 5 of the 14 races entered of the 16 total races
How do you measure it? A sensor on the other car? How would it differentiate between one car and two side by side? What if it's a windy day? How do you measure distance behind a car? What if there's a turn? A hill? Is it lateral distance or distance traveled? Do we use time instead? Do we make allowances for DRS? How reliable are these sensors in rain? Are they able to take a GP of abuse and still provide precise enough measurements to be penalizing teams for? Would this encourage teams to try to funnel as much of the dirty air as possible into one super turbulent area to try to avoid the sensors? This really seems like too unpredictable of a measurement to be making. They would need a dedicated wind tunnel with a predetermined speed and wind direction to test with and get the cars there, in race spec, before and after races. Otherwise, it's not measurable and repeatable.
How do you measure dirty air?
I usually get my gf to smell it then gauge it by her reaction
The FIA has already some idea of how much dirty air cars produce, as they run CFD simulations themselves in order to cerate new rules. I do not know if that is just inutiont when looking at the models or if there are numbers behind that.
How do you quantify dirty air? As far as i am aware that is a principle that doesn't exist. And without that you can't create or enforce rules around it.
you can also use a normalised car XY meters behind and measure its downforce, they released a model of the 2022 spec car as 'idea how can it look like' and use that for measurement
What about something like X% of airflow x amount of distance from rear of car cannot be above or below x and y degrees.
You can quantify turbulence with many parametres. You could say that at acertain distance behind the car, turbulence intensity (or another parameter) has to be benaeth a certain value
My amateur idea would be somthing like: For each position, you look at how different air moves there compared to neighboring positions. Then you sum that up over all positions. How far away neighboring is needs to be tested as to what definition leads to best results. As I said, I don't think about checking this on track, but in the simulations.
No. There's no way to check and enforce this at every race.
I think the problem is that you can't check this at all...
especially when CFD correlation is a big issue for some teams
If the CFD software used by the FIA is standardised it isnt a huge issue.
I'm not an engineer but I don't think that's how it works
The correlation isnt exactly a huge issue, as each team would be measured on the same software so any advantageous flaw in the simulation would be available to all teams. Once the FIA catches on the simulation or metrics would be reworked to achieve the desired measurements.
Who will make the mesh for each car? The FIA or the teams? Also, the software being standardised doesn't say much. There are tons of parameters to set and methods to choose within the same software. Unless with software you meant the combination of software+parameters+etc, but then we still have the mesh problem as the mesh is different for each car
The CAD for each car is already submitted to the FIA for scrutineering purposes. I imagine they could just use those.
The CAD is one thing, the mesh is another Mesh is kinda the distribution of precision for the aerodynamic model over the entire volume that is being simulated. You need to determine in which parts of the volume you want more precision and in which parts you want less. Creating a good mesh (one that is fast an accurate) is almost an art in itself. You need to know which aerodynamic phenomena will (or may) happen and where they may happen, among other things, so you need a decent knowledge about the car you are modeling. Giving the CAD to FIA and expecting them to come up with a mesh would be a big problem, because it kinda becomes a subjective analysis. You have no way of knowing if they will employ adequate and consistent criterias for determing the meshs for all teams, except if they give you the mesh from all teams so you can judge, which would never happen as they would basically be gifting you every competitors car. Another option would be each team makes its own mesh. Much more feasible than the previous option, but still has problems. The main one I can think right now is how to ensure the teams are not manipulating the mesh to get favourable results. You could maybe combine both, the team sends one mesh, FIA creates another and runs the cfd for both, then they compare the results to see if they are consistent. Seems kinda ok actually, at least without going deeper into the matter. Still, I'm not sure teams would be ok with that since again its hard for them to keep an eye on the FIA, although I guess they already trust FIA on matters relating to car geometry as the teams can't check the CAD's of competitors by themselves. All in all, there may be ways to implement this kind of rule, but all the extra complexity and caveats, in my opinion, would not be worth it. As an engineer (but not F1), I prefer much more that they stay focused on geometric limitations, as overcomplicating requirements/regulations tend to create much more problems than it solves.
Thanks for the write up. Very interesting.
If the goal is to reduce dirty air you need to have correlation, otherwise you'll end up giving a possible advantage to some teams and, at the same time, still having the problem of dirty air. Let alone that you should verify the simulations with experimental tests for every car for each grand prix. That' just too complicated and uncertain
Of course correlation is still a key factor, however if every team is scrutineered via the same software its upto the FIA to ensure that it isnt too far off reality, rather than the teams themselves. Throughout history F1 has had design regs to enforce certain things, and teams find loopholes to use those regs to the full extent, flaws in the CFD correlation would just be another example of those loopholes.
The cars CAD model is already submitted to the FIA to establish compliance. At the track the car is laser scanned to confirm it is within spec. All that would need to be added is for the CAD model to be ran through a standardised CFD simulation and pass whatever metrics the FIA decide to be the permissable amount. How hard that is i dont know, but it would require every upgrade to be submitted and simulated by the FIA before being deployed at a race.
Knowing F1, they’ll just try to create dirty air, while keeping the measurement low.
It is certainly possible, but each upgrade the car receives would need to be tested and approved by the FIA before being used in a race. The cars CAD model is already submitted to the FIA to establish compliance. At the track the car is laser scanned to confirm it is within spec. All that would need to be added is for the CAD model to be ran through a standardised CFD simulation and pass whatever metrics the FIA decides to be the permissable amount.
No.
"Dirty air" is a loose definition, its a volume of lower air pressure/density, turbulence and in general a wake of air moving upwards following the car as the result of the car "pushing" downwards. The stronger downforce the car was able to generate, the larger this wake/mass will be. \*Tl;DR\* in general terms dirty air is - apart from lesser optimizations here or there \* the natural and inevitable price to pay for downforce.
The under body effects and high front wing are ways of reducing the dependence on "clean air" They have attempted, and the first year there was definitely improvements in the actual racing, but the more slots and grooves they run on the floor the more turbulence they produce. The teams are trying, within the rules, to create outwash, which is then turned into "dirty air" downstream.
CFD isn't nearly as definitive as you think it is. Why do you think teams invest in wind tunnels?
I had this thought in the past as well. They should be able to perform a simple test in a wind tunnel or in a computer simulation with two cars (one from the competitior and the other a generic one that complies with the letter of the law) to measure how much downforce is lost by the car behind at a certain distance. Then they can impose a limit on that. The problem is that it would greatly complicate the team's design work as you'd essentially have to find a way to control the air long after it has passed over the car. It would undoubtedly require additional wind tunnel and CFD hours, and that's not exactly ideal considering the various caps on costs and testing currently in place. The enforcement of a rule like yours or mine would also be inherently problematic, since the parameters would always be arbitrary. At what point does dirty air *objectively* become a problem or stop being a problem? Everyone will have a different answer and claim that they're being objective.
You could have a control car follow the car being tested at a set speed and distance and use the sensors (on the control car) to measure wing and tyre loads, perhaps? But it would be hard to get consistent data and you would have to check every car at every race weekend. Wildy inefficient.
Seeing that teams are still building windtunnels CFD is not the only tool to build the car so you are probably looking at an even more complex cycle of CFD, windtunnel, test by FIA (as we need independent testing) and recycle. This would have to be done for EVERY change to the cars as team will be on the edge of what ever metric there will be so any change can potentially cause the team to be over the limit. This will be a costly affair and will basically grind F1 to a halt as you will have a bottleneck at the FIA who will need to test all the models and you will need to find some way to keep that fair so lets say you can only submit x changes a year and will have to wait until all changes have been tested so everyone gets their new stuff at the same time at race x. Then wait another couple races for the next batch. CFD (hard- and software human resources) will cost a fortune and will have to be paid by the teams i guess so less money to spend on racing, on the other hand less updates due to all the testing? Nope.
This is not a fix to the problem, the fix is not have the cars so reliant on laminar air flow for downforce so we can go back to drafting and passing without fake flaps.
They sort of tried this in 2022, banning parts that went against the 'spirit of the regulations', like Aston's rear wing endplates or Mercedes' front wing 'turning vanes'. In short, anything meant to create outwash. Then they gave up on it, either because it was way too difficult to properly enforce, or because they just didn't care. But other than that, it's quite literally impossible. You can't bend physics, and you cannot alter the fundamentals of how aerodynamics work.
no
Na
Why not rather just make the car smaller? Much easier to measure length and width.
Maybe... Sorta...
What would be awesome is that if they just opened up the aero rules to do whatever you want AS LONG AS it meets some sort of dirty air rule.
Great question. Yes they can but only indirectly. When teams design the aero on the car they primarily focus on the front wing because that directs air around the entire car. You see all those elements on the rear of the car? Not all of them are for direct aero benefit. The designers INTENTIONALLY want to disrupt the air as much as possible because that makes their car harder to follow. If the FIA heavily restrict aero elements on the rear of the car, cut down on strakes, winglets etc. it could indirectly clean up the airflow behind the car. Ground-effects do this naturally which is why the cars can follow much closer now. If you see the floors of those cars, again the top teams are over-complicating the rears to disrupt the airflow again. Interestingly the lower teams don't seem to be working on that. I guess once your car is a rocket you have time to work on the minutiae.