depends on the track.


slow track with lots of tight turns? triple element wing with tons of camber, and as big as you can fit on the car....

le mans, with a few sections where you crack 200 mph? a single element wing with a thin profile and very little camber.

Also, while wings may be race-inspired, the wing I showed as the "bad wing" would not be suitable on any car. It just plain sucks.



For most tracks in North America, a well-designed single-element would likely do the trick... or maybe a slim twin-profile. It all depends on geometry...

 

natrually, but is the consensus that multi-element wings create more drag than single element?

 

That's like asking, "What's the best tire?"

Best for what?

Multi-element wings are used when you need very high lift coefficients and you don't care much about the drag (other than you want to avoid separation). This is why you see them on airplanes during landing -- they actually want the drag, but more importantly they want the slowest landing speeds (and thus require very high lift coefficients).

For an airplane in cruise, L/D is the most important factor for aerodynamic efficiency. If you want to know what it looks like, check out a high performance sailplane. Very long, high aspect ratio wings. And definitely not multi-element.

But for a car, usually you need total lift (downforce) inside a given space constraint. In such cases, you can end up with a wing that just can't supply that lift coefficient without separating. So you use multi-element wings to re-energize the boundary layer.

 

even if that WAS true, assuming the L/D ratio is the same for both, then you are still generating more downforce over the single. So while you might be giving up straightline speed, you'll be cornering faster

and in a slow track w/ tight turns, low drag low downforce isn't the way to go

 

well, yes... unless the single element wing can't run at the same angle of attack without flow separation.... in which case the twin or triple element will have less drag and more downforce at the same camber and angle of attack.

if you're in engineering, it seems to me that you want to design your own wing... best way to go would be single element with generous camber. It is versatile, and for almost all tracks it will do the job quite well.

 

didnt ask which is best, but which is most efficient, efficiency being negative lift to drag ratio, thanx though

-Dino

 

...and since you are cornering faster, you'll have higher exit speeds, and might end up with the same top speed at the end of the straight despite having more drag.

 

only true if you're not charging into the corner too hard and killing the exits

 

You didn't define "efficiency" until now. Now that you have specified you are interested in L/D, then (like I said) look at a sailplane. That will tell you what sort of wing has the highest L/D.

Then go look at all the other wings in the world, and you will see that most of them don't look like sailplanes. That's because the overall efficiency of the vehicle is usually more complicated than the L/D of the wing itself.

 

again, vague question. it's kinda like a turbine... each turbine has an efficiency map, and each has it's highest efficiency at different flow rates, etc.

along the same lines, different wings have different efficiencies (using your definition) at different speeds. If your average speed is 90 mph, then the most efficient wing would be a twin or triple. If your average speed is 200 mph, then the most efficient wing would be a single.