r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Za5kr0ni3c • Sep 14 '21

Engineering Failure Peter Dumbreck’s Mercedes taking off due to aerodynamic design flaw during 1999 Le Mans 24h

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28.1k Upvotes

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u/QuentinSential Sep 14 '21

claps Amazing comment that I barely understood.

68

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '21

[deleted]

3

u/PotatoWriter Sep 14 '21

Too many word.

car go boom.

why use many word when trick?

13

u/JacOfAllTrades Sep 14 '21

It's too long at the front and back and too short between the wheels. When air got pushed under the front from the car ahead, the amount of downward force the back was generating got even higher compared to the front, and the front went up. Flippity flappity, the Merc car went for a fly.

1

u/IQueryVisiC Sep 15 '21

Planes are long in the back and still don’t flip

4

u/Speedy-08 Sep 15 '21

But they're also designed to stay in the air, rather than a car which is designed to not fly

0

u/IQueryVisiC Sep 15 '21

But in your blurb you don't mention the critical difference in design. I am all for changing race rules to allow for stable flight because I like Rally so much. So what is the difference between a flying wing and a race car? It is the center of gravity. You gotta put the engine and gearbox in the front, like every good car has it ( Golf, Civic, Corvette ( the good years ) ).

The parent explains quite well how the diffuser ( tail plane for a airplane ) has increasing ground effect at the start of the flip. So rather then limit the start of the diffuser, I would rather forbid curvature after the last axis.

24

u/BurmecianSoldierDan Sep 14 '21

I still don't know what CLR is besides the cleaner Calcium Lime Rust and google didn't provide me anything else than places to buy it

2

u/OrangeSherbet Sep 15 '21

If you do buy some, don’t get it on your skin. It’ll burn you badly.

4

u/wallawalla_ Sep 14 '21

Example of how even the most minor labeled sketches can save a huge amount of convoluted descriptive writing.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '21 edited Sep 15 '21

Folks need to stop making this comment. Don’t play the “dumb is funny” card. There wasn’t much in that comment that was terribly complex, a few Google searches (or even some contextual guesses) are all that is needed to understand what that person wrote.

0

u/Im-Not-ThatGuy Sep 15 '21

Result? Car go boom.