Nissan's DeltaWing!

[ichitaka05]

Crazy looking... I wonder how well it'll do on Le Mans

[Levi]

Please, bring a new Silvia weighing 1150 kg with this 1.6l I4 making 300 PS!

[old greg]

Originally Posted by Draco-REX

The thing is, the DeltaWing was designed by coming up with the looks first, and then engineering a solution that would allow it to work. Which, in my opinion, is how you design a production car, but bass-ackwards when designing a racecar.

Do you have any idea who Ben Bowlby is?

Originally Posted by Ben Bowlby

Looking radical was never the objective – the Delta Wing shape is simply the outcome of addressing performance targets... What we have proposed for the car is not a styling exercise. Form has followed function.

Source

[7thgear]

reminds me of this

only not as funny

[u2b]QQh56geU0X8[/u2b]

[Snoopyalien24]

Originally Posted by Levi

Please, bring a new Silvia weighing 1150 kg with this 1.6l I4 making 300 PS!

They have the engine, all they need is a crazy well balanced, light, rigid chassis and suspension like the BRZ/86 has.

Car of the century

[tranzformer]

Originally Posted by Snoopyalien24

They have the engine, all they need is a crazy well balanced, light, rigid chassis and suspension like the BRZ/86 has.

I agree. It would be epic if Nissan got into the game. I just don't have a feeling they will anytime soon.

[Draco-REX]

Originally Posted by old greg

Do you have any idea who Ben Bowlby is?


Source

Part of the Future IndyCar initiative was to design a car that would LOOK unique and give IndyCar an identity among all the other formula series. I'm sure Bowlby had some of the DeltaWing's dynamics already in mind, and this gave him an opportunity to create the car. But you can be sure that looks played a significant part in the car's design.

A three legged chair isn't as stable as a 4 legged chair regardless of how you build it. And those front wheels are narrow enough to effectively be a single "leg" of the platform. I said before that I find some of his ideas interesting. The shifting of almost all weight over the rear axle to compensate for the narrow front track has merit. In theory. But a lot can happen between theory and the reality of a race in the real world with other cars.

I foresee a blow-over in the DeltaWing's future. Going down the Mulsanne straight at nearly 200mph in the dirty air behind another car seems dangerous in a car that depends so much on under-car aero and body-generated downforce.

But we'll see. I'm not hoping it will fail. I'm just very skeptical that it will succeed beyond a moderate level.

[tranzformer]

Originally Posted by Draco-REX

Part of the Future IndyCar initiative was to design a car that would LOOK unique and give IndyCar an identity among all the other formula series. I'm sure Bowlby had some of the DeltaWing's dynamics already in mind, and this gave him an opportunity to create the car. But you can be sure that looks played a significant part in the car's design.

A three legged chair isn't as stable as a 4 legged chair regardless of how you build it. And those front wheels are narrow enough to effectively be a single "leg" of the platform. I said before that I find some of his ideas interesting. The shifting of almost all weight over the rear axle to compensate for the narrow front track has merit. In theory. But a lot can happen between theory and the reality of a race in the real world with other cars.

I foresee a blow-over in the DeltaWing's future. Going down the Mulsanne straight at nearly 200mph in the dirty air behind another car seems dangerous in a car that depends so much on under-car aero and body-generated downforce.

But we'll see. I'm not hoping it will fail. I'm just very skeptical that it will succeed beyond a moderate level.

Don't you think they would have already thought of that and tested that in their models and the wind tunnel? This isn't a high school project build.

[Dimman]

Originally Posted by tranzformer

Don't you think they would have already thought of that and tested that in their models and the wind tunnel? This isn't a high school project build.

It's a controversial design even among professional designers. Aero-wise until recently it was just CFD stuff.

The main concerns among the traditional designers are more to do with mechanical grip/stability in cornering and braking. Apparently it is quite dependent on a computerized torque-vectoring differential, as this is basically a 2 wheeled vehicle in terms of braking, cornering and accelerating.

One major one is how it will perform under wet braking, some feel it will be more likely to for the rear to hydroplane, because it doesn't have the clearing effect of normal front tires, plus it depends on all of its braking force from the rear tires. Could lead to a very unstable condition.

We will see. It's an experiment.

[7thgear]

Originally Posted by Draco-REX

A three legged chair isn't as stable as a 4 legged chair regardless of how you build it.

yes but a chair is not a car

at the end of the day what we're after is propelling a tire through space, on pavement. Then there is junk that's attached to the tire that has to be taken into account.. and other tires.

i'm very curious how this will turn out.

[old greg]

Originally Posted by Draco-REX

I'm sure Bowlby had some of the DeltaWing's dynamics already in mind, and this gave him an opportunity to create the car. But you can be sure that looks played a significant part in the car's design.

I'm obviously not going to be able to change your mind on this point. Suffice it to say that I disagree.

Originally Posted by Draco-REX

I foresee a blow-over in the DeltaWing's future. Going down the Mulsanne straight at nearly 200mph in the dirty air behind another car seems dangerous in a car that depends so much on under-car aero and body-generated downforce.

Blow-overs aren't caused by turbulence. They are caused by the pitch-sensitivity of the large flat underbodies that are required by sanctioning bodies. They occur when the underbody presents a positive angle of attack to the air flow and creates lift. By virtue of the fact that the Deltawing has significantly less underbody surface area in the nose of the car, I would argue that it will be much less likely to suffer such a fate than a more traditional car.

You do realize of course that all LMP cars generate the majority of their downforce with the underbody, right?

Originally Posted by Draco-REX

But we'll see. I'm not hoping it will fail. I'm just very skeptical that it will succeed beyond a moderate level.

Few race cars ever do.

[RRnold]

Originally Posted by tranzformer

Would like to see it on a track with other cars around it, but it looks fairly stable in this video.

[u2b]3wlQAvEfmeI[/u2b]

I didn't know they were testing at Buttonwillow! That's one of my favorite tracks besides being tore up. Too bad they didn't go over Phill Hill b/c I would have liked to see how it would handle an off camber dropoff.

[Draco-REX]

Originally Posted by tranzformer

Don't you think they would have already thought of that and tested that in their models and the wind tunnel? This isn't a high school project build.

Neither were these cars:

Originally Posted by old greg

I'm obviously not going to be able to change your mind on this point. Suffice it to say that I disagree.

Perfectly ok.

Blow-overs aren't caused by turbulence. They are caused by the pitch-sensitivity of the large flat underbodies that are required by sanctioning bodies. They occur when the underbody presents a positive angle of attack to the air flow and creates lift. By virtue of the fact that the Deltawing has significantly less underbody surface area in the nose of the car, I would argue that it will be much less likely to suffer such a fate than a more traditional car.

But don't forget that with the significantly smaller underbody area, is an equally significant reduction in weight on the front. Additionally there is even less downforce being generated at the nose, which seems to be designed to actually gather air under the car:

I see that long nose as an effective lever to expose the wider rear to more air as well.

You do realize of course that all LMP cars generate the majority of their downforce with the underbody, right?

While keeping a large aerodynamic device up in cleaner air. And without encouraging lift at a lightweight nose.

Few race cars ever do.

And if so, the DeltaWing will be known as another flop that was only notable for its looks.

[SkullWorks]

i don't recall the ELF car shown being a flop so much as outlawed...my recollection could be off but....

Remember the Chapparel? they had to come up with new rules to write it out of eligibility because they were using jet engines to create under car suction that allowed ridiculous cornering speeds...

Lots of stuff happens and isn't well accepted by sanctioning bodies and other teams, but calling something short lived a flop is usually wrong, if it didn't work well it would usually evolve for a bit before disappearing, most single showing cars are outlawed, often only because of the potential, before they even work well enough to be advantageous.