The IndyCar Series has commenced a technical study to understand how and why its new second-generation aeroscreen is causing a reduction of airflow into the ducting that feeds into the drivers’ helmets. Starting last weekend in Long Beach, the …
The IndyCar Series has commenced a technical study to understand how and why its new second-generation aeroscreen is causing a reduction of airflow into the ducting that feeds into the drivers’ helmets.
Starting last weekend in Long Beach, the series introduced its new aeroscreen which features new openings near the top of the screen which feeds more air onto their chests.
Drivers ranging from Will Power to Pietro Fittipaldi to Romain Grosjean to Graham Rahal have expressed their concerns over the change, which has led to limited amounts of air reaching their helmets and a loss of adequately cooling their heads through the side-mounted duct and hose.
“I could already feel it at Long Beach,” Power told RACER. “Your head is getting really hot.”
Although no changes or solutions are anticipated by Sunday’s Barber Motorsports Park contest, RACER has learned the series is running computational fluid dynamics studies to determine the root cause of the change and how it might be fixed at the earliest possible date.
The NTT IndyCar Series and its partners at Dallara, Pankl, and PPG are making steady progress on the second-generation aeroscreen that will debut in competition next year. Lighter than the first-generation driver safety device that was introduced in …
The NTT IndyCar Series and its partners at Dallara, Pankl, and PPG are making steady progress on the second-generation aeroscreen that will debut in competition next year.
Lighter than the first-generation driver safety device that was introduced in 2020, the collective efforts of the four parties have come up with an “Aeroscreen 2.0” featuring a new titanium frame that benefits from the latest additive manufacturing to pare weight from the halo that mounts atop the Dallara DW12 cockpits.
“We took the original frame and Pankl used something called ‘topology optimization’ to reduce weight in areas where the stresses are lower,” IndyCar’s Tino Belli told RACER. “It’s 3D-printed, obviously, because there’s a lot of hollow structures in the top frame. If you did subtractive manufacturing, CNC machining, you couldn’t get in there to take all the material away.”
With three seasons of data gathered on impacts to draw from, IndyCar’s partners and the series’ engineering group did studies to find areas where the original aeroscreen is overly strong, and with those lessons in place after the select in-race impacts the frame has received, weight in those areas has been relieved on Aeroscreen 2.0.
“By calculation, it should be 6.8 pounds lighter,” Belli said. “We’re load testing it at Cranfield in the UK [before the end of the month]. So that’s the top frame. The lightweight screen is not quite as far along in its process yet; we intend to start manufacturing hopefully by the middle of August. So with any of these components, their difficulty can’t produce five a week or anything like that. Most of them are about five to eight a month.
“We want for the first test of next year to have 27 ready and then we can fill in the extra supply so we have 66 of them total ready for Indy.”
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
The laminated polycarbonate screen made by PPG will also undergo a number of changes. Where the second-generation Pankl frame will be used at all rounds, the series is planning to implement separate road/street and oval screens, with the current, 9.6-millimeter-thick screen being carried over for all ovals.
The second generation aeroscreen will have improvements to driver cooling among other enhancements. Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images
When IndyCar goes road racing, a new, thinner screen will be used that will no longer have a heating element sandwiched between its layers. For the sake of improved driver cooling, the final version of the new road racing screen will likely have a pair of rectangular openings cut along the top where the sunshade strip is currently located.
The openings will have ducts affixed on the backside that takes the oncoming air and routes it downward onto the driver.
“So the original thought was just to replace the 9.6-thick polycarbonate with a six-millimeter-thick screen, and then we looked at the ballistic testing that we did and the maintenance side of the screen since it’s been in use and we’ve actually scrapped very few of them,” Belli said. “The 2.0 screen will be lighter, and this duct wraps around the titanium frame. The sun bands will go down a little bit lower and this duct will wrap underneath the titanium and then there’ll be a piece that extends through and turns 90 degrees and pumps air down into the cockpit.”
The new frame will accept the first- and second-generation screens, making changes between road/street races and ovals a breeze.
“We’re aiming for a total weight reduction of 11.2 pounds and are trying to make it close to 12,” Belli added. “We’re going to probably make that ductwork mandatory, and if so, we probably won’t continue to need the topside duct we mandate now when the ambient temperature reaches a specific threshold.”
The NTT IndyCar Series and its partners at Dallara, Pankl, and PPG are making steady progress on the second-generation aeroscreen that will debut in competition next year. Lighter than the first-generation driver safety device that was introduced in …
The NTT IndyCar Series and its partners at Dallara, Pankl, and PPG are making steady progress on the second-generation aeroscreen that will debut in competition next year.
Lighter than the first-generation driver safety device that was introduced in 2020, the collective efforts of the four parties have come up with an “Aeroscreen 2.0” featuring a new titanium frame that benefits from the latest additive manufacturing to pare weight from the halo that mounts atop the Dallara DW12 cockpits.
“We took the original frame and Pankl used something called ‘topology optimization’ to reduce weight in areas where the stresses are lower,” IndyCar’s Tino Belli told RACER. “It’s 3D-printed, obviously, because there’s a lot of hollow structures in the top frame. If you did subtractive manufacturing, CNC machining, you couldn’t get in there to take all the material away.”
With three seasons of data gathered on impacts to draw from, IndyCar’s partners and the series’ engineering group did studies to find areas where the original aeroscreen is overly strong, and with those lessons in place after the select in-race impacts the frame has received, weight in those areas has been relieved on Aeroscreen 2.0.
“By calculation, it should be 6.8 pounds lighter,” Belli said. “We’re load testing it at Cranfield in the UK [before the end of the month]. So that’s the top frame. The lightweight screen is not quite as far along in its process yet; we intend to start manufacturing hopefully by the middle of August. So with any of these components, their difficulty can’t produce five a week or anything like that. Most of them are about five to eight a month.
“We want for the first test of next year to have 27 ready and then we can fill in the extra supply so we have 66 of them total ready for Indy.”
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
The laminated polycarbonate screen made by PPG will also undergo a number of changes. Where the second-generation Pankl frame will be used at all rounds, the series is planning to implement separate road/street and oval screens, with the current, 9.6-millimeter-thick screen being carried over for all ovals.
The second generation aeroscreen will have improvements to driver cooling among other enhancements. Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images
When IndyCar goes road racing, a new, thinner screen will be used that will no longer have a heating element sandwiched between its layers. For the sake of improved driver cooling, the final version of the new road racing screen will likely have a pair of rectangular openings cut along the top where the sunshade strip is currently located.
The openings will have ducts affixed on the backside that takes the oncoming air and routes it downward onto the driver.
“So the original thought was just to replace the 9.6-thick polycarbonate with a six-millimeter-thick screen, and then we looked at the ballistic testing that we did and the maintenance side of the screen since it’s been in use and we’ve actually scrapped very few of them,” Belli said. “The 2.0 screen will be lighter, and this duct wraps around the titanium frame. The sun bands will go down a little bit lower and this duct will wrap underneath the titanium and then there’ll be a piece that extends through and turns 90 degrees and pumps air down into the cockpit.”
The new frame will accept the first- and second-generation screens, making changes between road/street races and ovals a breeze.
“We’re aiming for a total weight reduction of 11.2 pounds and are trying to make it close to 12,” Belli added. “We’re going to probably make that ductwork mandatory, and if so, we probably won’t continue to need the topside duct we mandate now when the ambient temperature reaches a specific threshold.”
The early forecast for this weekend’s Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix included the possibility of rainfall, and while it appears the NTT IndyCar Series drivers will now have three dry days of on-track activities, their teams have a new …
The early forecast for this weekend’s Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix included the possibility of rainfall, and while it appears the NTT IndyCar Series drivers will now have three dry days of on-track activities, their teams have a new solution to employ if the skies open up at Barber Motorsports Park or any future road and street course round on the calendar.
Developed in partnership with chassis supplier Dallara, IndyCar is introducing its new “damper cover turning vanes” this weekend which will be installed if it rains. Although use of the “rain vanes” is optional, the series has reserved the right to mandate their installation across the entire field.
The rain vanes address a specific issue that arose at the wet Indianapolis Grand Prix in May of 2022 where the mix of rain, spray coming off of leading cars, and the high-speed onrushing air combined to create a bubble of water that sat in front of IndyCar’s aeroscreen driver safety device. As some drivers reported, the stationary bubble of water blocked their view looking directly through the aeroscreen, and in some cases, drivers had to find alternate lines of sight to see the track and judge braking and turn-in points.
In response, Dallara and IndyCar’s aerodynamic and engineering team established a research and development program to find the best solution to the problem. After extensive modeling and virtual testing was done using computational fluid dynamics software, the project was elevated to full-scale wind tunnel testing at Dallara where a variety of vane designs were tried while water was fired at the aeroscreen at high speed.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
Observed from the wind tunnel by Arrow McLaren’s Alexander Rossi through a video camera placed in the cockpit of the Dallara DW12 that replicated a driver’s view from behind the aeroscreen, a final design which directs most of the bubble-causing spray away from the front of the aeroscreen was approved and put into mass production.
Made from strong and lightweight carbon fiber, IndyCar teams received the devices leading into Barber, and with the use of a jig created by Dallara to drill the mounting holes in the damper cover, teams began test fitting the vanes Friday morning.
Another interesting development was found in testing when the car was placed in yaw — at something other than a head-on angle, such as turning — where the mandatory centerline Gurney flap that ran up the middle of the aeroscreen was causing some of the bubble effect. Thanks to the greater advancements IndyCar and Dallara have made elsewhere on the DW12s with stability in yaw, the centerline Gurneys have been permanently removed from the aeroscreens to further reduce the rain bubble effect.
