Rita Gets a Spring Cleaning
She's NOT just a pretty face - but she IS lovely. And "maid" to be on the track. Some of the crew took a full-day to spiff her up in preparation for the new 2007 graphics. You could take this opportunity to meet'er...
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This Picture Shows a Lot of Things
 The tufts on the window post seem to be well behaved. The air seems to be wrapping around the side nicely. There's a little bit of separated flow near the roof. But I think cleaning up the window edges would fix that.
The airflow at the base of the rear tire seems to show separated flow in all the video. This means that air isn't closing back in behind the car as well as it could near the ground. The cause of the problem probably is further forward on the car.
Not real visible in this view is the row of tufts running along the top of the rear quarter panel. This row of tufts is well behaved in all views and shows the upper aft part of the car is well designed.
Now, the real interesting stuff.
I'm really pleased with the tufts on the trailing edge of the wing. The tufts were placed on the lower side of the wing facing forward. As you can see, the airflow is so strong that the tufts are turned backwards and align nicely with the wing mounting angle. If you look carefully, you can see a little bit of tip-vortex swirling on the ends of the wing.
So, we've got a nice amount of air closing in around the side of the car, then being deflected upwards by the wing.
What's odd though are the tufts along the rear edge of the trunk lid. If you notice, they are blowing straight down. We've got the wing pushing the air stream upwards and the air also seeming to be bending down after the trunk. I noticed as we were putting the car away that there was dust all along the back of the car. This led me to believe that the air was lifting up behind the car and depositing the dust. But the tufts seem to be showing that the air is lifting up well aft of the car, pulling forward and then flowing down the back of the car. There is a big horizontal vortex behind the car that is picking up the track dust, bringing it forward and depositing it on the car.
I'm thinking some more tuft testing around the window openings might show how to best improve the airflow over the roof.
Some VGs might help the air closing back in behind the car, but I think the biggest improvement would be achieved by cleaning up the airflow on the front splitter. That would create smoother air that could be controlled.
Paul Illian (Team Aerodynamicist)
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