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Veritasium did a video on Micromouse competition which also got the breakthrough via similar kind of technology (fan that sucks air from under the car) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMQbHMgK2rw Interesting watch.
> fan that sucks air from under the car And deposits grit and gravel into the windscreen of the car behind
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Then we could just simulate the race based on the cars' and track's mathematical parameters, and then CGI the whole thing in Unreal Engine, and watch it in the Metaverse. No need for actual cars or drivers anymore.
Which, from a spectator experience point of view would be more interesting anyway. As you could create tracks with intersections, allow aggressive driving etc. And, looking at you F1, know immediately when a car did leave the allowed bounds. Instead of hours after the race.
They say grip is the limiting factor. What about having something like tank tracks?
IIRC that grip scales linearly with the downward force and is (maybe counterintuitively) invariant WRT to the grip area.
I would suggest that if you are allowed a fan that sucks air from under the car then you can easily achieve pretty much any acceleration. The reason F1 cars do not do this is because suction is limited in F1 for very specific reasons and it goes back to the fatal crash of Ayrton Senna. Basically, a car that relies too much on suction is unsafe to drive because any failure can throw the car out of track with fatal con…
You seem to be saying that the down pressure causes the suspension to be compressed, but the basic design must cope with that, either by fitting heavier springs, or using a self-leveling system.
I would suggest that if you are allowed a fan that sucks air from under the car then you can easily achieve pretty much any acceleration. The reason F1 cars do not do this is because suction is limited in F1 for very specific reasons and it goes back to the fatal crash of Ayrton Senna. Basically, a car that relies too much on suction is unsafe to drive because any failure can throw the car out of track with fatal con…
Ground effect was used in F1 between 1978 and 1982. Ayrton Senna died in 1994.
Ground effect in general has been in use since the F1 cars first changed shape, and is used everywhere, not only on race cars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which, from a spectator experience point of view would be more interesting anyway. As you could create tracks with intersections, allow aggressive driving etc. And, looking at you F1, know immediately when a car did leave the allowed bounds. Instead of hours after the race.
That could be very interesting and fun - compelling even. Many upsides. But without risk to life or limb and without a test of human (or monkey, or dog, or self aware AI, etc) emotional and psychological and spiritual and physical limits in real time, it could never be cool or sexy or glamorous or badass or epic or moving.
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> battery technology only needs to equal about 25-30% the raw energy density of fuel "only" is doing a lot of work here, current lithium batteries are under 1 MJ/kg while good ol car gasoline is at 40+ MJ/kg top fuel dragsters run nitromethane which is 4 times less energy dense than regular gas yet the go much faster so clearly there is much more going on than just energy density, like the fact that they have to enti…
AFAIK the big problem with an electric drag racer is weight/mass. Batteries are heavier than fuel. Electric motors are fantastic at acceleration, but you have to feed them with enough amps to make that happen. A drag racer doesn't need range, so storing a large volume of energy probably isn't the problem. But having enough batteries to supply enough amperage to get that kind of acceleration is probably adding too muc…
That's an exaggeration or a misstatement. Even flying the shortest possible flight (a single takeoff and climb, followed by a descent and landing at a very nearby airport) is overwhelmingly likely to use more total energy in the taxi, cruise, descent, landing, and taxi portions. I looked through some of my datalogs from flights where I flew circuits back to the same airport and the fuel (energy) used for a takeoff and climb to pattern altitude was only rarely more than the fuel used for the rest of the circuit, and that was only when practicing emergency turnbacks from a simulated loss of thrust on takeoff.
The peak power is used on takeoff, but the majority of energy is used in cruise.
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Then we could just simulate the race based on the cars' and track's mathematical parameters, and then CGI the whole thing in Unreal Engine, and watch it in the Metaverse. No need for actual cars or drivers anymore.
A few of the current F1 drivers already have sim setups and play driving sims as well as the official F1 video game. What you're suggesting isn't too far off.
They say grip is the limiting factor. What about having something like tank tracks?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC that grip scales linearly with the downward force and is (maybe counterintuitively) invariant WRT to the grip area.
that's absolutely counterintuitive. is it because all the weight of your car is shared equally between all points of contact, so more grip area = less force per grip area?