Aerodynamics Fundamentals: Front Canards
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Front Canards
04.17
| 00:00 | Front canards, also known as dive planes, are an aerodynamic device that we can use when we need additional forwards aerobalance on the car. |
| 00:08 | Ideally, we want to get as much load as we can out of the front splitter and then only need canards for fine tuning. |
| 00:14 | But with that said, there are plenty of rulesets where we're front limited and need to lean heavily on the canards. |
| 00:20 | Canards differ from front splitters in their characteristics quite a lot, and this is a result of front splitters being in ground effect, while canards aren't so much. |
| 00:29 | Front splitters are usually extremely drag efficient and can generate huge amounts of load. |
| 00:34 | Canards generate less load per unit area and more drag as they don't have ground effect there to help them out. |
| 00:41 | Front splitters are quite ride sensitive as a result of ground effect, canards are not. |
| 00:46 | These are key factors to consider when selecting or designing canards for a car. |
| 00:51 | Canard load is usually dictated by two things, size and overall angle of attack. |
| 00:57 | They're usually sitting in air that has been upwashed from the splitter below, and they always have a vortex rotating around their free tip that keeps the air attached on them for longer than we'd expect on a conventional wing or splitter. |
| 01:09 | As a result, the angle of attack on canards can typically be much higher than you'd think and the flow will remain attached. |
| 01:17 | However, running this higher angle of attack means that the pressure differential on the canard will be acting with a more rearwards facing surface. |
| 01:24 | As a result, we get quite a lot of drag from canards, especially big ones at high angles of attack. |
| 01:31 | Generally speaking, the more downforce we gain from front canards, the worse the rear will perform. |
| 01:36 | This is for a few reasons. |
| 01:38 | The front canard will create upwash behind it, and this will drag some of the dirty air off the front wheel up with it. |
| 01:44 | This air inevitably interacts with the rear wing, feeding low energy air into the front of the rear wing, which consequently hurts rear wing performance. |
| 01:53 | The upwash from the canard also reduces the effective angle of attack of the rear wing, even though it's quite a long way downstream, and this will depower the wing. |
| 02:02 | The canard itself and the vortex shed off the canard will introduce loss to the flow, which will travel downstream and cause a drop in performance of any downstream aero device. |
| 02:13 | When designing a canard, we want the leading edge to be close to align with the flow. |
| 02:17 | If anything, we actually want it with the flow slightly upwashing naturally towards the leading edge. |
| 02:23 | As typically canards are made from single skin carbon or aluminium construction, so they don't have nice rounded and profiled leading edges. |
| 02:32 | Note that I said aligned with the flow, not the horizontal plane. |
| 02:36 | In reality, this usually means a very slight angle down on the leading edge, around 5 degrees. |
| 02:41 | This is because of the upwash of the front splitter. |
| 02:44 | From this point, there should be a progressive upwards curvature. |
| 02:48 | Ideally, we'd target a leading edge to trailing edge rise of approximately 100mm for every 300mm of length. |
| 02:55 | This is by no means a hard rule, but it puts you in the ballpark. |
| 02:58 | If we had canards about 250mm above the splitter at their lowest point, that's a decent place to start. |
| 03:06 | Canards can also often benefit from an outer end detail, whether that's an upturned flick at the end, or a small, say 20mm tall end plate on the top surface only. |
| 03:16 | This will harness the outwash generated by the front bumper on the car, and power up the canard by converting some of that outwash into upwash, resulting in increased downforce. |
| 03:26 | Ok, let's wrap up this module by going over the main points covered. |
| 03:30 | Front canards or dive planes are used to fine tune forward aero balance, complementing the front splitter. |
| 03:36 | While splitters generate significant downforce efficiently due to ground effect, canards generate less load per unit area, and more drag. |
| 03:44 | They don't benefit as much from ground effect. |
| 03:47 | Canards are less ride sensitive and can operate at higher angles of attack due to vortex formation around their free tip, although this leads to increased drag. |
| 03:56 | They can negatively impact rear wing performance by introducing upwash and dirty air into the flow, as well as reducing the rear wing's effective angle of attack. |
| 04:05 | Properly designed canards align with the flow at their leading edge, feature slight upward curvature, and benefit from outer end details to increase downforce. |
