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The mkiv Supra Owners Club

Variable aero wing.


Kirk
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Here's something that will interest some of our members who are serious about aero.

Essentially its a variable aero wing that changes pitch determined by g sensors and a speed sensor.

 

This is josh barnes track supra which has been fully built by titan.

 

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I think it's fair to say that's not a bad effort compared to most of the junk out there.

 

Still not liking the wing profile though. I bet the wing tips would have shat themselves a long long long time before the centre starts to stall (which is what he's looking at with the tuffts).

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That could be quite useful when braking!

 

Wouldn't this be quite tricky with the car suddenly picking up different downforce at different speeds. Surely this would make driving more unpredictable as while the car is in motion the wings are adjusting. By the wing has moved into position you would be on the anchors!

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When I read this I was expecting something similar to the Active Aero system that's on the Mitsi GTO, looks like it's just a spoiler hooked upto a few servo valves and a remote control.

 

Useful for braking when being seriously pelted around, I suspect, but not a lot else.

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Guest Joshua
I think it's fair to say that's not a bad effort compared to most of the junk out there.

 

Still not liking the wing profile though. I bet the wing tips would have shat themselves a long long long time before the centre starts to stall (which is what he's looking at with the tuffts).

 

I choose this wing after seeing many of the fastest Time Attack cars here in the US using them. Aeromotions is not just a tuning shop that decided to throw a wing together with a servo. Not sure what your background is, but Greg Mark, one of the co-founders of Aeromotions has a B.S. and M.S. in Aerodynamics and Astronautics from MIT. This wing was designed at MIT and used wind tunnel testing during its development.

 

Here is a pic of where he was a few days before he came to Titan to work on my car, it's an F430 in a rolling road wind tunnel that does 180mph (it's the tunnel the F1 guys used when they were allowed to do full scale testing):

 

http://aeromotions.com/Forum%20Images/Ferrari/F430%20Wing.jpg

 

 

 

 

This is a project they worked on, this car runs one of the Aeromotion wings (not the same one that I have obviously) and their controls, as well as being the aero consultant on the project...so this alone was enough for me to decide to use their product :). Here is a link to one of the project:

 

 

 

 

.

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Still not liking the wing profile though. I bet the wing tips would have shat themselves a long long long time before the centre starts to stall (which is what he's looking at with the tuffts).

Why do you say that? Wouldn't the centre stall first?

 

Paul.

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Don't get me wrong, as I said, it looks like probably the best effort out there.

 

There's two questions that I have over it:-

 

A) The profile looks very 2 dimensional. Looking at their website it looks like they have a generic profile and they then use different mounts to fit it to each application. They say that it's because it's because they're "They are aerodynamically clean and efficient wings". That's simply not correct. The twist distribution should be matched to the onset flow across the span.

It may be that the mounts are designed for each application to position the wing into an area that has a similar flow regime each time. However whilst I have absolutely no doubt that it'll be making a fair amount of downforce, but I can't see it being particularly optimised for each application.

I do see that they offer a centre line stall fence for some of their products. I imagine this is because the wing will also be stalling around the rather ugly mounting lugs and the stall fence will help to prevent this propogating across the span. It would be a lot better if the design enabled the lugs to be hidden within the wing volume.

 

 

B) When setting the wing up I would personally had placed tuffts across the entire chord. On a profile like this I would imagine the wing tips to stall first as they're the most heavily loaded part of a wing. If the wing was placed quite low behind the rear screen then maybe the centre would stall first because the slightly downward flow coming down the rear screen compared to the fairly horizontal flow around the side of the car, however the only way to say one effect would overide the other is by measuring. By using the tuffts you've definitely done the right thing, personally I would have gone the very little extra and checked that it was indeed the centre downward flow effect that was causing the centre to stall before the tips were though.

 

Still I quite like the control system, that looks at both speed and acceleration.

 

You may or may not know, but this year the F1 regs allow us to have moveable rear wing flaps, so it's something that pretty much all of the teams would have been looking at to some degree over the last few months.

 

I don't know which tunnel you refer to though. The only full size tunnel that I know some of the teams used in the states was the Windshear tunnel, but the tunnel in that picture isn't that. Perhaps the defunct USFOne project used one that I'm not aware of.

 

 

As I say, don't get me wrong, I think this looks like one of the best generic wing products out there, I just think it *could* be better.

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Guest Joshua

Tony, thanks for the reply!!! I will see if I can get Greg from Aeromotions to reply to this thread to try to learn more.

 

I did some testing in early December, but we did not have the control box mounted exactly perfect so it put the dynamic part of the wing into safe mode and we ran it in a static position. I can say that I have never felt so much rear grip, so much that the splitter we had made was not helping enough and Greg is making a new one that will complement their wing. I will be testing again this month on the 22nd/23rd if the splitter and new brakes are ready. I have a traqmate data system, so I will be able to compare the segments of the track where the wing and splitter should really help.

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