Williams FW36 – Special care on cooling

 

   Cooling efficiency is of special attendance in 2014 , thus Williams did not neglect to design and construct an extra cooling inlet inside the main sidepod tunnel.

 

Marussia M03 – Airbox zone details

 

    Airbox on M03 is very effective in regards of cooling. Beyond the main triangular inlet, there are two more additional openings to cool down  internal mechanical parts ( i assume them to be the oil radiator and ERS components). Exploiting  airbox zone allows mechanics  to maintain sidepod inlets close to 2013 dimensions rather than enlarging them a lot. The appearance of the car now lacking the sculpted bodywork behind the driver’s head  resembles more to monocoques prior to 1997 season . Worth’s taking into consideration that such a configuration is more draggy and suffers increased negative aero impact caused from  driver’s helmet .

    Finally a small but important cooling inlet exists where the engine cover starts to drop downwards to feed the gearbox radiator.

Mc Laren MP4/29 – middle zone aero development at Jerez Test

 

  It was surprising to see Mc Laren adopting a relative short, missing the complexity of former seasons, vertical sidepod panel on the MP4/29  . The answer however to this was given shortly on the first test at Jerez with the team to add a chimney just above the panel for enhancing cooling. That chimney simply does not leave enough free space for the panel itself to develop vertically. Chimneys lastly introduced as cooling solution on cars back in 2001 again on a Mc Laren car and onwards for a few years more. Its shape and use gradually evolved and expanded, in some cases combined with a side winglet (Williams), in others used sealed solely as flow conditioner (Ferrari) or even housed the periscope exhaust tailpipes  (Ferrari and Jordan ) .

   Another new feature on the MP4/29, not present on Launch, was the addition of double vertical flow conditioners on sidepods .

 

Caterham CT01 – cooling ( up to Bahrain)

       Car cooling is crucial not only for reliability but for overall efficient aerodynamic performance . Teams have to compromise between the previous two having in mind both weather conditions and the nature of track where the race takes place .

        Usually larger hot air outlets are present at high temperatures and relative slow tracks featuring many slow turns and hairpins . On the other hand tracks having long straights favor less extreme cooling configurations because the car manages to catch large volumes of fresh cooling air while crossing the stretches .

       Pre season testing is a good opportunity to test various cooling options, both conventional and  extreme which are more suitable for Malaysia and Bahrain for instance. However the pre season tests takes place during chilly European Winter time and are not representative 100% to real weather conditions the teams are about to cope with ,thus improvements are likely to be made .

      Caterham tested/raced  from car launch up to Bahrain, overall four cooling configurations as shown and analyzed below

 

Launch

middle sized triangular outlet at the back of the engine cover (also called funnel) , gills at exhaust zone and openings at sidepods tail .

 

Barcelona test on March

Huge oval outlet at the back of the engine cover, appropriate for extreme hot conditions. However it was never brought to race till now

 

Australia

Large circular outlet at the back of the engine cover , raced at Melbourne and Sepang

 

China -new concept

 Tiny triangular outlet at the back of the engine cover, double openings at sidepods tail. accompanied with diffuser revisions .Raced at Sinopec and Sakhir .This configuration leaves a cleaner airflow over the rear beam wing but as counter side it widens the coca cola bottle silhouette of the car

Sauber C31 – cooling assymetry in Sepang

 

Another interesting point on C31 at Sepang was the asymmetric  cooling gills at cockpit sides . The right sidepod tunnels  accommodate the oil tank and thus need extra cooling care .

 

 

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Ferrari F2012 – Cooling (Launch to Malaysia)

 

   F2012 before Melbourne inherited a set of gills at sidepod ending and a new larger hot air outlet of gearbox radiator  . At Sepang cockpit gills were added to improve the cooling efficiency of the car  and a rectangular duct in front of the cockpit  to cool down the driver .

cockpit gills for Sepang

 

nose duct to feed cockpit with fresh air

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Red Bull RB8 – Improved cooling for Malaysia

All teams,including Red Bull, at Sepang pay a greater attention to the  cooling efficiency of the car. Thus RB8 raced with gilled larger hot air outlets at both cockpit sides , which replaced the Australian simpler holes . The slots on sidepod tops ( pointed with green arrow) remained for Malaysia . That slots were present since the launch of the new RB8 but they were rejected during pre-season testing before coming back again at Melbourne .

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Many updates on Sauber C31 before Melbourne

The blue labels in the photos above are temperature indication stickers , used by teams to track down temperature along the route of the hot gases .

       In addition to changes concerning C31 cooling, many other revisions took place on the car before Melbourne . The rear silhouette of the sidepod  tunnels was heavily modified after launch at Jerez test . The new longer tunnels expand smoothly to reach floor level  in a such way to guide more drastically the exhaust gases towards the  inside area of  the rear wheel profile and reach the diffuser . To enhance the effect further,  a channel is sculpted behind the periscope exhausts and later at Barcelona test on February   a vertical fence was added on the floor along the route of the hot gases.

         Speaking for the rear floor morphology , it was reshaped twice with the first revision to take place at Jerez alongside with the sidepod expansion to the rear and the second revision at Barcelona on March with the trapezoid channel in front of the rear wheel to be replaced by a small duct .

Launch,
trapezoid channel in front of the rear wheel

Barcelona on February,
Floor vertical fence in orange

Barcelona on March, ducted floor   

 

 

      A promising update for the team which took place also at Barcelona on March , was the connection of the sidepod panel  to the chassis via  a wavy winglet to force air flowing  above the  sidepod profile to follow the shape outline of the sidepod  stronger  and increase the downwash effect of exhaust gases to the diffuser .

 

Sidepod panel winglets

    Some interesting but important details on C31 are also the following

-a small duct , already present since launch , permits a small portion of air flowing under the floor to find exit above the floor level instead of bleeding to the sides .In some occasions the duct was partially covered with tape

– a  cooling duct for KERS components is spotted at left side only of the sidepod bottoms

-briefly Sauber tested a set of gills around the launch spec periscope exhausts

floor duct

KERS cooling duct

gills around periscope exhaust area

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Sauber C31 – cooling options tested during Winter testing

     Winter testing gives the opportunity to teams not only to understand the new car but also to check reliability and to improve performance as much as they can . Part of the program is also to evaluate the cooling efficiency of the car, having in mind  a wide range of possible weather conditions , for instance from cold  to very hot conditions( Bahrain , Malaysia , summer races etc ) . A significant handicap is that 2012 winter tests  took place in Spain under the cold winter time , which forces teams only to figured out which are the  most appropriate cooling options at very hot races .

    C31 at its launch version had large outlets at the back end of the sidepod tunnels , through which hot air from radiators escaped .Additionally a series of gills at both cockpit sides contributed to cool down the car internal components .

Launch , sidepod end outlets (in red) and gills at cockpit sides

At the very first test at Jerez Sauber featured an extra outlet for the hot air located at the end of engine cover .

Jerez test and Barcelona test on February , additional outlet at engine cover’s end , gills at cockpit sides were retained

The later concept seemed to be insufficient for even hotter conditions and thus Sauber moved a step forward and tested a Red Bull style engine cover funnel in Barcelona test on March . Of course the large funnel harms overall aerodynamic efficiency of the car and it is expected as an option only for few races ( such as Bahrain , Monaco , Malaysia , Hungary , Singapore , Abu Dhabi ) where high temperatures and low average speed will be a threat to reliability .

Barcelona test on March , a very large engine cover funnel replaced the former smaller outlet

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Sauber C29 – Special cooling care to the electronics

        Sauber’s electronics are tightly packed inside the sidepods and in particular in front of and under the inclined radiators . In order to keep their temperature reasonable low Sauber opened a small duct on both  radiators inlets to feed the electronics with fresh air . The hot air then exits via a series of slits spotted at the back .