maximum control and comfortability on a racetrack.

[yousafjdm]

I have a set of questions for my research at university and was wondering if any of yous could give your personal opinions..
Would really appreciate it.

What styling would you use to increase your performance vehicles aerodynamics?

What is the best and material to stitch and use on a performance vehicle steering-wheel and why?

Would bigger air vents on the front bumper of a car allow it to cut differently through a corner?

What 3 main vehicle handling factors to consider on a race track?

[HustleRussell]

yousafjdm said:

I have a set of questions for my research at university and was wondering if any of yous could give your personal opinions..
Would really appreciate it.

What styling would you use to increase your performance vehicles aerodynamics?

What is the best and material to stitch and use on a performance vehicle steering-wheel and why?

Would bigger air vents on the front bumper of a car allow it to cut differently through a corner?

What 3 main vehicle handling factors to consider on a race track?

I would pick different questions

[ZeroGroundZero]

yousafjdm said:

I have a set of questions for my research at university and was wondering if any of you could give your personal opinions..
Would really appreciate it.

Coming from a background of car racing I'll try to give some answers....
Although your question is a little open ended I'll answer on the assumption that you are talking about race cars and not road cars on track seeing as you mention racetrack as the condition.

yousafjdm said:

What styling would you use to increase your performance vehicles aerodynamics?

Styling in just about all cases of a race car design would come 2nd place to functionality. The case where this is not, is where the rules mandate a particular design which may have little, none, or even negative effect on functionality, for the purposes of series identification or marketing etc.

So with that in mind, any styling that would go on to a race car should be a performance benefit. To identify if it is a performance benefit it would be tested with lap timing equipment and driver feedback (and other equipment depending on budget and requirements).

Anything that is added to a race car on the basis of it just looking nice can easily cause the car to perform worse on track.

yousafjdm said:

What is the best and material to stitch and use on a performance vehicle steering-wheel and why?

The material here would preferably be non-slip and something robust enough to be used with driving/race gloves. Foam wrap materials work well if you are talking about the covering over the metal construction of the steering wheel itself.
The objective here is to create a surface that will not slip on the driver's hands and also something that doesn't deform such that the position of the wheel becomes confusing to the driver.

yousafjdm said:

Would bigger air vents on the front bumper of a car allow it to cut differently through a corner?

Air vents are for allowing more air in to cooling components of the car's engine, brake system and often enough oil and water circulation systems.
Vents can also be used to create air flow over or around bodywork or to channel air to other parts of the car.

Front bumper vent design to get the car to "cut differently through a corner" , this won't have much of an impact to be honest unless you are creating vents in such a way that will have aerodynamic effects. By this I mean if the vents are able to take or put pressure on to the front axel which will affect the grip balance of the car. But the usual method of this is via wings, weight balance and/or under-car flat body design and diffusers. The front balance of the car is very dependant on the rear end design of the car too.

yousafjdm said:

What 3 main vehicle handling factors to consider on a race track?

There are many factors which include but not limited to.....
Grip balance.
Wheel geometry set up.
Suspension.
Driver capability.
Vehicle weight.
Tyres.
Traction delivery.
Brake balance.
Aero package (if any), if not then basic car profile presented to the air flow.
Power applied to all the above - as this will determine likely achievable speeds around the track which in turn then decides how much air flow (pressure) will be involved to be affected by aero packages, also the likely speeds in corners which will then impact on weight transfers etc.
Track conditions, rain, dry, altitude etc.

All are important so just pick any three if you only need to specify three.
If I were to pick three it would be driver capability, tyres, power output - if focussing purely on lap time. (Notice only one of those three is really to do with car design).

I'm fairly new to PH so I suppose I'll add a disclaimer to this reply (is that the done thing?) .... any ways, the above is purely my own opinion. Others are free to disagree.

[yousafjdm]

Thank you my friend, made a lot of sense, nice breakdown and exactly what i was looking for.

[take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey]

HustleRussell said:

yousafjdm said:

I have a set of questions for my research at university and was wondering if any of yous could give your personal opinions..
Would really appreciate it.

What styling would you use to increase your performance vehicles aerodynamics?

What is the best and material to stitch and use on a performance vehicle steering-wheel and why?

Would bigger air vents on the front bumper of a car allow it to cut differently through a corner?

What 3 main vehicle handling factors to consider on a race track?

I would pick different questions

I agree. I used to mentor Eng. Grads and the questions worry me.

A) They show a lack of understanding of automotive engineering.

B) They don't seem to follow a coherent theme. OP, what is your hypothesis / research theme that you're hoping to validate / explore?

C) The questions can be answered in a way that would not be remotely helpful for research.

D) The questions lack context - I could answer each question from many different perspectives and each would be equally valid, yet would not help your project.

Goid luck OP, but Russell is right.

[andrewcliffe]

the wording of your questions suggests English is not your mother language.

define "increase aerodynamics"?

you're either looking to increase downforce or decrease drag. The holy grail is achieving both at the same time...
Most people don't have the luxury of a wind tunnel or even CFD equipment to quantify what they have as a baseline and to make any informed choices which is why a lot of cars have unsightly aero appendages which do absolutely nothing - increase weight, increase drag and no measurable increase in downforce.

And when it comes to aero, styling doesn't come into it, function over form.