PERSONAL PROJECT PITCH

PT.1 : BACKGROUND

Since the start of racing, cars often only relied on two types of ways to keep all four wheels stuck to the ground. The first, discovered and used since the start of racing, being the friction between the wheels and the ground. However, relying only on that method brought forth problems in high speed corners, as cars need a lot more force to keep all four wheels stuck onto the ground in faster corners; to solve this, aerodynamics was invented to guide air to create downforce on the car and use air flow to press the car onto the ground. Even then, cars had a major problem: mid to low speed corners. Tires can help the car turn in slow corners, and the aerodynamics can help the car become better in high speed corners; the mid speed corners, however, are a rather undeveloped area as friction from the wheels are inadequate to strongly pull the car to the ground and the car isn’t moving fast enough for the flow of air to adequately make the car have high levels of grip. Thus, the third source of grip came to be – fan suction cars.

– The Brabham BT46B

This car above is one of the first fan suction cars, which used a fan to suck the car firmly to the ground in all sorts of corners, meaning that the car is incredibly faster that others in every single corners, especially mid to low speed corners. The car only had the opportunity to complete one race, and it won the race with incredible ease. However, the car was immediately banned, which also made it the only F1 car that has a 100% win rate.

PT.2 : PROBLEMS

However. the downsides of this design was also made obvious as rapidly as it was banned in F1. The complicated mechanism decreased the reliability of this design and the added weight added to this car also slowed the car and decreased the agility of the car through corners.

– The complex structure of the fan system

What’s more is that the car relied on an extremely low underbody to sufficiently localize the suction of the fan, which also increased the dangers of car damage and thus loosing control of the car in races.

PT.3: SOLUTION

To solve this problem, I invented a system that used a source of suction that existed as far as automotives existed – the engine. By using the intake of the engine to suck out air from the bottom of the car, this elegant solution could increase lap times while adding minimal weight and minimal adjustments to the pre-existing race car framework.

– A simple diagram of the engine suction system

The valve that controls the amount of intake airflow coming from the top and bottom of the car also makes the downforce of the car adjustable, with less airflow from the bottom of the car reducing grip and thus increasing top speed, and more airflow from the bottom of the car increasing grip and thus increasing cornering speeds. The design uses the space available in race cars such as f1 cars perfectly, as the duct could fit in the space behind the radiators perfectly; this also helps with engine cooling as the air coming from the bottom of the car is cooled by the radiators and then sent to the engine.

PT.4: POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

There are a few possible problems to this design and possible solutions, which is as such:

1. Air flow into the engine could be restricted, as the air pressure in the bottom of the car is lower and could thus cause lower pressure inside the combustion chamber. This will then decrease the power output of the internal combustion engine and thus decrease straight line speed.
   • A possible solution is the valve, which could cut off airflow from the bottom of the car when the car needs power in sections of the track such as the straights.
2. Air flow into the engine could carry rubber bits and other unwanted substances into the engine, which could cause mechanical problems and malfunctions in the engine.
   • A possible solution is adding a filter to the duct and thus decreasing the chance of unwanted substances entering the engine.