Whats your opinion of front canards?
#11
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Australia
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Vehicle: Lancer Evo IX
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So, I went out and bought myself a set of carbon fiber front canards and I was wondering what everyone thought of them? Useful or more for show than anything?
They're a fine-tuning tool when you look at it from a motorsport perspective, with the majority of front downforce still being generated by the diffuser, forward ducting and the frontal surfaces that have an angle of attack on the car. However, they're handy when you want to play with the flow over and downstream of the front wheels(to the side of the car) but even then you need to fun CFD tests to determine where the air's gonna go(I have the program to do this, its quite basic so it won't do more complicated stuff) to get the angle right(measured along the chord of the canard) They're worth quite a bit of drag though, and like other aerodynamic aids they need to somehow be able to transfer the pressure being generated at (x) vehicle speed to the chassis or the pressure will end up being lost to bodywork flex.
For a road car I really don't see much merit in them, as speeds aren't high enough to take advantage of them(and even if you do get it up that high, the front bodywork will flex and soak up the pressure instead of the chassis transferring it to the tyres)