[Beowulf] F1 to go CFD only?

Greg Lindahl lindahl at pbm.com
Wed Oct 14 14:02:59 PDT 2015


On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 08:40:27AM +0100, John Hearns wrote:
> Interesting article on HPCwire
> 
> http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/10/07/formula-one-debates-cfd-only-future/
> 
> i don;t see it myself - wind tunnels are an important part of the aero
> engineers toolbox, and they don't run them for fun.

I totally expect it. Wind tunnels can validate the model for a single
car, but what everyone really wants to know (as of ~ 8 years ago) is
what happens with two cars, which is much closer to the real
environment in a F1 race.

And doing two half-scale cars in a wind tunnel, that's going to be a
huge wind tunnel... not affordable for any F1 team's budget. For
boundary condition reasons, it's going to have to be more than 2X the
width of a one-car tunnel. Ouch.

-- greg




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