I was thinking yesterday when i went home, about the inherent
difficulties of any vehicle when on a circuit, and when cornering.
Basically a lap time is largely decided by the cornering speeds as
well as the exit speed from a corner onto a long straight. If we
could raise the speeds of a vehicle in a corner, we would
significantly also increase the exit speed, and thus the speed on
the straightway as well.
Now in a corner, a vehicle's grip is very important. Currently grip
can be controlled thru aerodynamic means, and also the
uh........
mechanical design of the whole chassis and suspension systems as a
dynamic whole. we know that in racing and on-road use, many cars
are fitted with traction control(TC) to help improve grip in
corners by limiting the wheelspin. In some cars, esp the 4WDs, like
the EVO and the Skyline GTRs, they have rather sophiscated
electronical systems like AYC and ATTESA E-TS.
These systems help to detect which wheels need more grip and such,
and distribute torque and power to the respective wheels as needed,
or it cuts off the power to a certain wheel to limit wheelspin for
maximum traction.
Now there can only be so much that engineers and designers work on
the aspect of mechanical grip on a car. I was thinking about it
yesterday and i thought about looking at the problem from an aero
point of view. I do not know if other car manufacturers and
designers have ever thought about this idea for a solution.
Now, if a high tech sports car like the Enzo, Carrera GT,
Murcielago or the SLR do not need a physical wing on the car, i
guess it means we are technologically advanced now that our car
designs can have a lot of minute aero devices on the car. Also as
far as i know, the Murcielago, SLR and Carrera GT have some simple
form of movable aero devices, which allows a variation of downforce
as and when needed.
If a car was designed with movable aero devices at all 4 corners of
the car, and a system installed to detect downforce needed and
adjust the downforce on each corner of the car, that would
certainly make the car much faster. Eg. under accel, a car's weight
transfers to the rear, sometimes making for poor traction at the
front, or sometimes causing understeer(eg. when accelerating out of
a corner). if the system was able to detect the resultant loss of
grip of the front wheels, it would then adjust the frontal aero
devices to generate more downforce at the front end of the car,
thus negating the effects of weight transfer. Another would be
during cornering, it detects the need for grip on the inside wheels
of the car, and adjusts the aero devices on that side of the car,
thus giving the car grip on the inside an outside as well, and
maximising the grip limit of all 4 tyres. hence combining the 2 eg,
we have a car which virtually would be able to self-correct,
generating downforce where its needed, and also to reduce downforce
when its not needed, such as while on a long straight. I believe
such a car would certainly be very very quick. much quicker than
the Enzo, Pagani, Carrera GT or the SLR.
The question is, are our technology there yet? The electronical
components and the processing power of the computer unit that would
have to be installed. I believe the electronic system governing the
aero devices would be quite complex and require a lot of processing
power. Are our current computer science there yet? Also such a car
would face a lot of wear n tear when driven at high speeds, esp the
aero devices, are we able to utilise the current level of
technology in the design and physics of materials? How about other
factors such as the design of durable movable aero devices and the
installation of servo motors to move them? reliabilty?
As such this is a concept car question, we shall ignore price for
now. What i want to know is, can it be done? What are the problems
which might be faced during the design phase and maybe construction
phase?
