In Spain, Mercedes brought a brand new baseplate upgrade, and judging by W13's performance on the front straight at Turn 1, it seems that the team has solved the dolphin jump problem. The convoy added a blade-like side wing design to the edge of the base plate, which is said to have played a key role in mitigating and resolving dolphin jumping. In this issue, we'll look at the G-force amplitude of the car vertically to see if Mercedes really solves the bounce problem.
From the data released by the team, the G-force amplitude of the W13 car in the vertical direction is indeed somewhat lower than before, from 0.7G at Imola Station to 0.45G in Spain Station, not only the amplitude of the dolphin jump has been reduced, but also the probability of dolphin jumping has been reduced by more than 60%, and the performance of the feedback to the car is mainly reflected in the reduction of the amplitude of the dolphin jump on the straight, and the dolphin jump in the high-speed curve has hardly occurred, which is finally reflected in the driver's driving control feeling. Brake points can be more easily controlled at the end of the main straight, as well as more downforce in high-speed corners.
As can be seen from the vertical G-force shown in the chart above, as the fuel load decreases, the W13 car can steadily control the dolphin jump amplitude to around 0.4 to 0.45G, even the car with the least impact of the dolphin jump in the 10 teams. Judging from the sensor data disclosed by the team, the deformation of the bottom plate has indeed undergone a qualitative change, the bending amount of the main body of the bottom plate is less than 0.7%, and the force of the deformation of the bottom plate due to the increase in speed is basically applied to the newly set side wing, and according to the data obtained by the sensor, the deformation generated on the side wing reaches 14%.
The side strip wings will bend to the ground when subjected to greater downforce, and at the same time exclude excessive airflow in the gap between the side strip wing and the main body of the base plate, which seems to be a stress release, with a local shape transformation to take the deformation of the bottom plate as a whole; in addition, a strong vortex will be generated under the bottom plate in front of the side strip wing, in addition to sealing the air flow below the bottom plate, it can also offset the constant bending force of some of the side strip wings to delay the time when the side strip wings are in contact with the ground.
In addition, on the front edge of the baseplate, the convoy also added a design similar to the wheel bed to better guide the flow of air flow above the baseplate, reducing the possibility of the airflow above the baseplate flowing into the bottom plate, for this reason, the convoy also added a vertical fin outlined by the yellow line in the figure, where a vortex can be generated to seal the airflow above the bottom plate, so that the airflow under the bottom plate can be minimized by the influence of the upper airflow, so as to ensure that the pressure difference between the two sides of the bottom plate does not change with the increase of air flow rate.
The data proves that the Mercedes W13 car has indeed made great progress in overcoming the problem of bounce, whether it is from the driver's driving control feeling, or the car's stability in the corners and the straight tail speed, and the team does not have to worry about the so-called congenital badness of their B version of the car. That's all there is to it, so if you have any objections, please leave a comment in the comments section.