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Old 25 Nov 2004, 01:37 (Ref:1163416)   #14
Red Dog
Racer
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location:
Poole, Dorset, UK
Posts: 207
Red Dog should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
Yes Ntrprise.

As the wing angle of attack increases, the lift (meaning downforce here) will increase but so will the drag. At a given point, determined by the profile of the wing and generally between 12 and 16 deg, the air will prematurely detach from the underside of the wing and lift (downforce) will decrease. This is the stall condition.

Two things to note:
1) To measure the angle properly the true chord line of the wing must be found. This is from the centre of the leading edge radius to the top edge of the trailing edge (ignore any gurney strip) From this you will see that a wing that looks to be at zero degrees is actually at 3 or 4 degrees already.
2) Unless you have an excess of power or are not expecting to get above 80 mph you do not want to run your wing at anything approaching stall speed as the drag penalty is too big. I would say 8 or 9 degrees is about it.

I have seen people who should know better run silly wing angles and wonder why they didn't go quicker and in any case it is very important to keep the car balanced. Lots of rear downforce will tend to lift the nose unless you add downforce there too. How big is your testing budget??!!
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