DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
"It takes a lot of time to evolve a racing car into a simple, elegant, purposeful design that is also future proof."
Why is the Oak tree following a better design philosophy than the Eiffel Tower, in the context of racing car design?
Purposeful design.
One feature per function and one function per feature.
Unique structural connections through strong nodes with just the right amount of blending of material.
Achieves best lightweight solutions for required strength.
Achieves just enough strength but not too much (the oak tree might break during a hurricane, the racing car during a crash).
As racing car design is evolving, we are getting closer and closer to the oak tree design and further away from the Eiffel tower design:
Use of long fibres on the outside surface for lightweight strength
Less spaceframes and fabricated components, more integrated shapes and single components
No component split at the nodes - modern manufacturing is helping with that (3D printing)
Sections and thickness evolutions with loading (like trunk and branches). The branch needs to break before the trunk (example buckling of a suspension member during a crash to protect the chassis from perforation).
Aston Martin bikes
Example of 3D printed 'nodes' in Titanium and carbon tubes as link between nodes.
Developing with performance in mind
Simple means only the minimum required of features in the design. Small number of systems, small number of design features.
Purposeful means that the systems achieve the functions required, and just that function, no more. There is no added value to over-engineer or over-spec a system. It will only get heavier for no performance gain.
Future proof relates to making sure you invest time and effort in solutions that are legal, are not going to be banned (complies not only with the regulations but also the spirit of the regulations) and also anticipate any requirement for set-up changes, manufacturing possibilities. It is all about understanding where the evolution of racing car design is going towards and having a vision for what is going to stay and what is not.
Most of these concepts are captured at design level, in the CAD models: keep surfacing to a minimum, design mainly using mechanical design tools, keep the design structured and aligned with X, Y and Z axis as much as possible (part splits, assembly interfaces, fasteners).
Keep it simple and effective. Start with square shapes.
Try to fully understand your initial design before adding more parameters, features and shape.
Often there is more performance to be found in the initial concept with less parameters to explore.
Developing with performance in mind.
Every design step and decisions should be made to increase performance.
Performance is "Faster lap time that can scale"
Faster lap time is speed.
Scalability is reliability and stability.
Developing with performance in mind
Only speed that scales is valuable long term when you go racing.
Every design step and decision should be made to increase performance. It is very difficult to come back from having over-engineered or over-complicated your design. It requires to remove some of the complexity (systems, features) that shouldn’t have been implemented in the first place and this means, often, accepting to lose some peak performance initially before developing back some stable performance.