Works like an inverted airplane wing. Then how exactly does an airplane wing work? The answer to this question lies in the fundamentals of aerodynamics and elementary physics. If we omit all the nuances and other difficulties, then the emergence of lift in an airplane and downforce in a car is not the same difficult process. This phenomenon is based on the difference in pressure on different sides of the wing (spoiler). With a car spoiler, a low pressure zone forms underneath it (under the spoiler), thereby pressing it to the ground. Together with the spoiler, the rear part of the body is also pressed, providing better grip. rear wheels With road surface.

Spoiler - not alone

But using one spoiler, without special body kits, is pointless. And sometimes it’s even dangerous. The faster the car speeds, the more air it cuts through. This leads to worse grip with the road, and if at such a moment you press the rear axle harder, the front axle will lose stability, which can lead to an accident. Therefore, when installing a spoiler on the trunk of a car, you also need to take care of the aerodynamics of the car in the front. There are special body kits and bumpers for this. By their design, they reduce the amount of air passing under the car, which has a positive effect on the stability of the car.

Worth remembering!

When installing such body elements, you need to remember that they all increase air resistance while driving, which reduces maximum speed and increases fuel consumption. This is especially critical for medium and high speeds.
That is why the best spoilers are those that are able to change the height and angle of inclination depending on the speed of the car. So at low and medium speeds, when the car’s stability is sufficiently high, the spoiler can be raised quite a bit, and its tilt angle will be minimal. At high speed, on the contrary, the height and angle of inclination should be maximum. This will add stability, but will worsen aerodynamics. But for the sake of safety, you need to sacrifice something.

Side skirts

Very important role Side skirts also play a role, because a properly designed side skirt of a car will facilitate faster passage of air under the car. This will reduce the lift of the air flow and increase traction.
When installing such body elements, you need to remember that any intervention in the design of the car entails consequences, both positive and negative. And you need to correctly assess the situation so that the number of positive aspects exceeds the number of negative ones. Life safety comes first, and a car is just hardware that will have to be thrown away sooner or later.

First, you need to understand the difference between a spoiler and a wing. Spoilers are most often located closer to the car body and help slow down the air flow. The wings are placed much higher and create downforce through their aerodynamics. The wings resemble airplane wings, only turned upside down. How then do airplane wings work?

Now let's take complex issue and explain the answer to it accessible language. Of course, there are many complex parameters to consider, but for now we are talking about the basic principles of wing and spoiler design and are only looking at how they benefit the vehicle's performance. Explained in simplified form, fast moving air creates a force when opposite side object slows down the air.

To test this theory, take two sheets of paper and hold them with your fingertips so that they are about 1 inch apart. Then blow into this gap and you will see that the sheets are attracted to each other. And this is not what you expected to see. Fast moving air creates an area between the sheets low pressure, because of this, the sheets are attracted to each other.

A single wing or spoiler mounted on the rear of the car will not improve its performance, although the car will definitely look cooler. To create lift or downforce, the air on one side of the airfoil needs to move faster than the other, creating a force in the direction of the faster flow. Of course, you probably don't want to put airplane wings on your car, so we use a simple double-decker air brake to create downforce.

The angle of attack or deflection affects the amount of downforce produced. The greater the angle, the greater the downforce, but at the cost of greater drag. Most wings use two angled surfaces that create two stages of braking, sending the air over the wing along a shorter path.

When thinking about how spoilers work and how wings are designed, it is important to note that air must travel a longer path along one side of the wing. To do this, you need to either increase the area of ​​one of the sides, or place an obstacle on the other side to slow down the air flow. This brings us to the need to consider the geometry of the entire car body and how it affects downforce/lift.

If you look at a typical car body shape, you will see that air will move faster and travel a longer distance along the top of the car. And this leads to the appearance of lift. Opening the sunroof on high speed may make the situation even worse. That's why standard car When driving at racing speeds, it becomes unstable and loses traction and control dangerously quickly.

Due to the Coanda effect, after deflection, the air flow will continue to pass along the reflective surface until the end of the spoiler. This can be compared to the movement of a stream of liquid or gas along a surface if you bring the side of a cup under a stream of water: note what happens to the stream after it leaves the curved side of the cup. Now we are already beginning to understand that simply installing a spoiler on the trunk of a car has nothing to do with changing the aerodynamics.

Imagine that the car is a swing, when you press back of which the front will rise slightly. After installing the spoiler on the trunk on high speeds the front of the car will become lighter. For front wheel drive car this is very undesirable, and rear wheel drive car still needs to be steered, so losing traction when the front end is lifted is also undesirable.

To combat front end lift, you can use front splitters, front and rear skirts, which create downforce and control the air flow under the car. When you start to redirect airflow over the car, you get a braking effect that reduces driving speed and economy, so there is a very a fine line between efficient and ineffective spoiler and wing designs.

Sometimes at Formula 1 races and other car competitions you could see spectacular accidents when the car was lifted into the air on a bump, and the spoilers only helped the car fly off and crash. Some cars create downforce that exceeds their weight, making it possible to drive upside down on the roof of a tunnel (if you don't think about how to get there).

Best wings adjustable, giving the driver the opportunity to adjust their characteristics depending on road conditions. So, a slow track with a lot of corners will require a very different set-up than a fast track with long straights. They are also mounted high above the trunk to take advantage of the air flowing over the car from above. Vertical slats on a spoiler increase straight-line stability and are often seen on motorcycle spoilers.

Side skirts and trims speed up air flow under the car and improve cornering stability. For the best effect, it is recommended not just to open the accessories catalog and order a spoiler with beautiful stickers. Instead, go to a sports mechanic and get rear wing, suitable for your vehicle and your requirements. It is useless to install only one rear spoiler, as this will only increase driving noise. Suitable skirts and modifications to the underbody of the car are needed to create additional downforce.

The wings begin to create noticeable downforce at speeds of around 80 km/h, but until reaching 110 km/h they do little to improve the car's handling. Spoilers can reduce your car's aerodynamic drag, but they don't do much more than just design enhancements.

To summarize, we note that the spoiler is designed to slow down the air flow. The car, due to its aerodynamic shape (the air path on top of the car is much longer than under it, like a wing), creates lift at the rear of the body, and the spoiler slows down the air flow, reducing lift. The spoiler does not create downforce, it simply reduces lift. The wing, mounted high and creating downforce, helps improve traction and vehicle handling at high speeds.

Sometimes even experienced driver, what is the difference between a wing and a spoiler, he will not always be able to formulate. That is, to explain on your fingers in the style: this is such a thing - everyone is quite capable (well, they say, you yourself understand what I mean). But to show the difference to an outsider who is not connected with the car industry, who is never literate, is very difficult for almost everyone. But in vain, it would be worth finding the words, since many novice and inexperienced drivers believe that these chips are needed only to indicate the coolness of the owner in the eyes of others, that is, to divert attention.

These devices were invented and installed for a reason, but for some purpose that is not always clear to the average person. Let's try to understand this issue.

What is the difference between a wing and a spoiler, at first glance, was once well defined by a familiar auto mechanic: “The first sticks out, the second merges.” However, this definition does not at all explain the reasons why people spend quite a lot of money to install these devices.

Goals and objectives

Both chips primarily perform different functions: spoilers improve the aerodynamics of the body and optimize oncoming air flows, while the wing has a rather negative effect on these factors, but improves car handling. Spoilers, roughly speaking, cut the air, forcing it to blow over the car with smaller jets (by the way, their another name is splitters).

At the same time, in this process Different spoilers press different parts of the car to the road surface. Along the way, these parts take on the functions of protection, repelling dirt, lumps and dust flying out from under the wheels (their own and those of their comrades on the road) from the body.

The wing, as already mentioned, is intended mainly to improve the car's controllability. The principle of its operation is already indicated in the name: if the wing must provide lift, then its opposite is precisely downforce. And this force acts exclusively on the rear axle, pressing the hood from the rear to the road surface. As a second function The rear wing can be mentioned to increase the stability of the car at high speeds. However, this is a consequence of the same pressing effect.

Spoilers

Purely outwardly, they are like a continuation of the car body. They are mounted flush with it and seem to be an integral part. The front spoiler is placed under the bumper. It directs the air so that low pressure is formed under the bottom of the car. Accordingly, the higher one - from above - presses on the hood, pressing it to the ground. This achieves a certain aerodynamic effect.

Rear spoilers can be mounted on the trunk or on top of rear window. As a result, the latter gets less dirty while driving, and the rear axle is more heavily loaded during strong acceleration. Due to this division of the flow (large at the bottom, under the bottom, small at the back, on top of the trunk), the car as a whole is pressed against the road along its entire length.

Wing: There is only one of them and it is placed in the back, on the trunk. It is mounted not end-to-end with the surface of the body, but on racks. The simplest is installed permanently; more advanced ones can be folded - in this case, the wing rises when accelerating over 140 km/h. And what’s really cool is that on the road it can also change the horizontal tilt, taking into account the speed. When braking, the wing creates additional resistance, reducing the braking distance.

For installation - contact the installers

It is not recommended to install both spoilers and a wing yourself, unless you are an expert in aerodynamics and are not familiar with the details of the correct calculations. Even wrong selection, based on the principle “I liked this one better,” can significantly increase the resistance of the body to air flows - despite the fact that the goal was to reduce it. And an illiterate installation is quite capable of turning a rear wing into a real wing, lifting the rear of the car above the road surface.

Knowing the difference between a wing and a spoiler, you can imagine the consequences of incompetent installation of spoilers: the car will be tossed and driven back and forth along the road while in motion. And fuel costs, rest assured, will increase by at least 20-25 percent: the engine will have to overcome additional atmospheric resistance.

To the surprise of many car enthusiasts and tuning fans, the wing and spoiler are devices with different purposes. Let's carry out small excursion into the world of car aerodynamics to understand the role of the spoiler and rear wing.

From the theory of aerodynamics

The wing, as the name suggests, is the opposite of the wing. Main principle the work of the wing is the creation of lift. The pressure difference between the lower and upper plane of a profiled body was described by Bernoulli. It is the profiled shape of the wing, in which the upper plane has a large area, that is used in aviation to create lift. In the case of a wing, the same physical process takes place, but only the wing is inverted. Thus, the plane on which the fixture is installed receives additional clamping force. This is the main purpose of anti-wings.

How does a rear wing work on a car?

The area of ​​the lower part of the wing is larger than the area of ​​the upper plane, so the air above the wing passes faster. An area of ​​low pressure is created in the lower part, and a high pressure area is created in the upper part. The effect is increased by placing the epoch at a negative angle of attack. There must be a distance between the bottom and the plane on which the wing is installed for the passage of air flows. It is in this way that the installation of the rear and front wings gives the car additional pressure on the contact area of ​​the wheel with the road. In other words, downforce increases.

A little about the spoiler

But what is the spoiler for then? This term in automotive world also came from aviation. The aircraft wing uses special multifunctional spoilers called spoilers. Their main purpose is to resist lift. As for a car spoiler, it is a device for redirecting air flow in order to reduce aerodynamic drag. An additional, but no less important, function of the rear spoiler is the removal of mud flows. When driving at high speed, turbulence forms behind the car, which leads to the suction of mud flows passing under the bottom. Therefore, the rear spoiler is designed to reduce turbulence.

In motorsports, oddly enough, spoilers are used to create a vacuum behind the car. The turbulence creates a low pressure zone near rear bumper, which helps to increase the clamping force. The speed of passage of air flows under the bottom of the car increases. In this case, the spoiler helps the entire car body act as a wing (you need to remember Bernoulli's law).

Main characteristics

To summarize, we can general comparison. Wing:

• creates clamping force;
• increases the drag coefficient.

Only spoilers are mounted on civilian cars, since the use of a wing leads to an increase in fuel consumption and, as a consequence, the amount of harmful substances from exhaust gases. That is why design bureaus are working to reduce the value of Cx (air resistance coefficient).

Miracles of aerodynamics

Avid car enthusiasts may recall the classic aerodynamic element used by Porsche. The so-called ducktail, which many rear-engined sports cars get. The ducktail cannot get the name for the rear wing, since it has no distance between the body and the lower edge of the aerodynamic element. But Porsche’s idea cannot be a spoiler, since it is located long before the point where the air flows are disrupted. And this aspect is one of the main ones if we are talking about defining a rear spoiler.

Thanks to the large angle of attack, the ducktail significantly increases downforce rear axle. But this is precisely the role that the wing performs. Also for aerodynamic element a vacuum is created, which causes air currents to slide along the rear of the car, simultaneously capturing hot air With engine compartment. Thus, the engineers solved two important problems.

Many modern sports cars have a controlled wing. It can not only change the angle of attack, but also be completely integral with the body up to a certain point. The wing automatically moves out when a certain speed is reached, changes the angle of inclination depending on braking force and intensity of maneuvering.

Front aerodynamics

Despite the fact that when most people mention a spoiler, they think of a rear aerodynamic accessory, even a “lip” can be classified as an air flow distributor. front bumper. This front spoiler removes some of the air near the road surface, directing it towards the car body. The “skirt” allows you to reduce the turbulence that inevitably arises when bending around suspension parts, transmission, exhaust system. Constructors modern cars they are trying to make the bottom streamlined by hiding elements under aerodynamic covers.

In motorsport, not only classic “skirts” are used, but also more developed front bumper spoilers. So-called splitters, the purpose of which is to cut off the incoming air flow, passing it through the internal channels of the air ducts. The intake air can be used to cool the engine, brakes or for a diffuser in the rear bumper.

In time trials, the increased resistance to incoming air is compensated by an increase in power. The main goal is to improve vehicle handling, stability and braking efficiency.