What Is Aero Mapping In Formula 1?

Generally speaking, aero mapping is the process of mapping the relationship between the geometric properties of a race car and the aerodynamic properties of the race car. This aids in improving the race car’s performance by providing more fine-tuning capabilities to the aerodynamics.

The aero balance, for example, explains the distribution of downforce between the front and rear axles. Shifting this balance can help prevent oversteer. Another consideration is cornering performance: when the circuit is densely packed with high-speed corners, more downforce is required. The drag penalty associated with high-downforce settings, on the other hand, will slow you down over the course of a lap on circuits with long straights.

It’s critical to have a strictly defined relationship between the car’s setup parameters and the aerodynamics available when setting up or modifying the car.

Aero mapping allows a race car’s aerodynamics to be improved without a lot of experimentation. Simply put, mapping is accomplished by building a comprehensive three-dimensional model of the car’s surface, which may subsequently be used to locate and optimize airflow around the vehicle. This could help the automobile perform better and be more competitive while inside the circuit.

Aero maps help race engineers decide how to set up the car’s aerodynamic components for each circuit. They show how changes in ride height, wing angles, rake, and other settings affect downforce, drag, and balance.

If a driver wants more rear downforce, the aero map shows what changes are needed to the rear wing and how to adjust the front wing to keep the car balanced. These maps are built from a combination of wind tunnel data, CFD simulations, and real-world track testing.

On race weekends, teams validate their aero maps by using sensors such as laser ride height detectors and suspension load cells. Flow-vis paint may also be applied to surfaces to observe airflow. This allows engineers to compare real-world performance to what the wind tunnel predicted.

Aero maps are also used in simulation. Teams can model a new wing or floor design before it’s ever built, assess its effect on car balance, and decide whether it is worth developing. This makes aero mapping essential not only for setup, but also for long-term development.

The goal of aero mapping is to route airflow around the car in the most effective way possible in order to create downforce and reduce drag.

There are two advantages to aero mapping. It can help to increase the automobile’s performance by increasing downforce and reducing drag, as well as keeping the car stable at high speeds.

During a race, the front wing and rear wing are the most important factors in tuning and balancing the car properly. Curving a flap’s bottom surface such that airflow must move quicker along the bottom than along the top provides a downward force, driving the tyres deeper against the track and boosting grip.

All of this downforce, however, comes at the expense of heightened drag, which significantly reduces the speed of the car, as well as the downforce/drag relations on various wing configurations. For making rapid and exact decisions on the racetrack, being aware of these relations for each configuration is essential.

On the basis of the set-up of the aero, a driver will need the car as balanced as possible up to a specific point. The driver may prefer to keep driving with his centre of gravity in a particular position, which will be different from that of his teammate.

So, what does a team do in this situation? It’s not a guessing game! The rear, as well as the front wings, are the only aero devices that can be adjusted on the car. Other than those, the rest of the setup is fixed and can only be modified via wind tunnel testing. At each end of the car, the rear and front wings produce significant downforce, and either of these can be adjusted for more varied degrees of force produced.

The chord and span are the two defining measures for each wing, with cross-section determining the final design. The attack angle determines the force the wing will produce after it has been designed. Because of its design, the wing can still provide some downforce at zero angles of attack. If the angle is raised, however, this will generate more downforce until it reaches a specific point. Air begins to split from the surface about this time, resulting in a significant reduction in downforce.

The main plane and the flaps are the rear and front wings’ two parts, respectively. The primary plane, which has a fixed attack angle, is where the majority of the downforce is generated. The flaps, rather than the main plane, are in charge of fine-tuning. The angle of the flap is changed to produce varying degrees of downforce, and the half-degree shift in flap angle is utilized to fine-tune the car. A “screwdriver-like” mechanism can readily modify the flap’s angle, and it may be done fast while in the pit stop. Similarly, adjusting the flap angle on the rear wing can enhance or decrease downforce at the back of the automobile. Engineers are able to get varying amounts of power from the exact same wing due to the complexities of aerodynamics.

Although the fundamental form and overall aerodynamic performance of a race car are first drawn on a designer’s computer. Every team spends a lot of time in the wind tunnel throughout development, testing lots of different configurations with a model of the automobile that has a lot of different components. The team will test hundreds of aerodynamic trims, looking at lift/drag trade-offs, predicting ride heights, and adjusting suspension setups to ensure you’re getting the most out of the car’s aerodynamics at different trims and trying to develop a better understanding of what and how impacts your overall performance and why on any of the tested configurations while meticulously mapping the results.

For each new wing design and automobile arrangement, the same technique is used. To give aerodynamic prediction and improvement capabilities, regression models were constructed for each of the responses. The aero map depicts how the wing components and ride elevations of a race car function in terms of lift and drag in various configurations. Everything is meticulously documented, and data tables are made. There is an aero map for each wing or arrangement.