| but it seems like you don't quite understand what a diffuser is supposed to be doing. First of all you mention twice that your aim is to decrease turbulence and to increase the velocity of the air stream. you are on the right track in reguard to eliminating turbulent airflow, but do so to decrease drag rather than to increase air velocity. In fact the whole purpose of a diffuser is to decrease the velocity of the air stream, this is the downforce producing part of a diffuser. The second thing a diffuser does is wake infill. as the cross sectional area of the chanels in the diffuser increase the air slows down and gains pressure. The slower, higher pressure air from the diffuser fills in the low pressure pocket that exists in the wake of the vehicle. this low pressure zone in the wake causes drag on the vehicle because in effect it is sucking on the back of the vehicle. the pocket can be shifted around with the exhaust, or the rear wing in a way that is advantagous to the rear diffuser. that's what people are talking about when they say to 'activate' the diffuser. Finally you talk about tuning the diffuser but you have the wrong idea about this as well. Unlike a Wing, a diffuser is not a tradoff between drag and downforce. Ad I explained above a properly designed diffuser should do both. The tuning comes in on experimenting with the angle of the diffuser, the point it starts at etc. Idealy you would run as steep an agle as possible, except that if you go too steep the flow will detatch from the diffuser cieling and then you will get vortexes like edies on the sides of a stream. If the flow becomes detatched it ruins the effect of the diffuser and causes drag. Nixit probably knows more about all this stuff than me. I just want to reiterate that I am no expert and there could very well be a few errors in this explination, but it should still be able to help you if you decide to redesign.
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16:53:35 03/19/11
