Winglets 2018 V4S

Agree

Now if you just want the damn things anyhow because they look cool, we’ll that’s a different animal and if thats the case, get em. If it is just a looks thing, I might be concerned with bumping into something with them or something bumping into me and potentially jacking the bodywork unless those things just fall off. Is the thing capable of supporting a standard size coffee cup? That might be a benefit as well.

endodoc said:

Now if you just want the damn things anyhow because they look cool, we’ll that’s a different animal and if thats the case, get em. If it is just a looks thing, I might be concerned with bumping into something with them or something bumping into me and potentially jacking the bodywork unless those things just fall off. Is the thing capable of supporting a standard size coffee cup? That might be a benefit as well.

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Can confirm they support a cup. And in my case, a portable speaker for when I'm working in the garage. Convenient place to hang things.

Jesus we are back to wings what a mess lol

Now that @endodoc brought it up, I wonder if they are designed to break away. With crash testing on vehicles, there's all kinds of rules that you have to be able to hit a pedestrian at X miles per hour and they get up laughing. I'd speculate that's when they went to the super fragile mirrors instead of the folding ones like the 1199 had.

Ducati mirrors are only there to pass inspection, they are an afterthought at best. Those carbon wings could slice you for sure. All the GP bikes have loops or endplates on their wings, a safety requirement

"MotoGP banned the use of normal 'protruding' wings on safety grounds at the start of 2018 but gave the green light to 'integrated' wing devices"

Snapped this in the pits Saturday. More wing like than others I’ve seen. From why I understand these wing configurations change positions and possibly design from track to track. Not sure if there’s is a rule preventing pit “tunable” airfoils. Next stop would be ECU controllable active surfaces.

Yeah its coming next the active axis controlled wings will be able to control the lean angle. More electronics its never gonna end.

endodoc said:

Snapped this in the pits Saturday. More wing like than others I’ve seen. From why I understand these wing configurations change positions and possibly design from track to track. Not sure if there’s is a rule preventing pit “tunable” airfoils. Next stop would be ECU controllable active surfaces.

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Mick1976 said:

Yeah its coming next the active axis controlled wings will be able to control the lean angle. More electronics its never gonna end.

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Can't wait.

Also on the question about if the wings are breakaway... after an incident I had in my garage, I highly doubt the wings will breakaway... those mofos are STURDY and I'm grateful.

CSV4 said:

Also on the question about if the wings are breakaway... after an incident I had in my garage, I highly doubt the wings will breakaway...

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Yeah, they produce ~80 lbs of downforce at 180 mph, so they must be strong enough to bear 40 or 50 lbs each.

craig bush said:

Yeah, they produce ~80 lbs of downforce at 180 mph, so they must be strong enough to bear 40 or 50 lbs each.

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So if we use the 80 lbs at 180 let’s use 20 lbs at 45. Now I know it’s not a linear curve but for the sake of conversation. Personally and I’m not an expert by any means but I have never had an issue with stability going straight so I’m going to go with “wings in a turn” to aid in planting the front.

On the straight, any downforce created by the wing will result in some speed degradation. You are bleeding off energy to create downforce. So let’s take our turn at 45. Now the wing is no longer horizontal due to bike lean so we are not really sure what the downforce distribution looks like in relation to the relative wind. Many things effect this so the question is, is there a noticeable difference in front end stability for a “spirited” street rider with the wings?

If it works you are effectively creating a front end load (tire patch contact)similar to trail braking without braking? I personally am no where near the limitations of a wingless bike that wings would do anything for me however if you have exhausted the limitations of wingless cornering, then I would concede that airfoil augmentation would be the next step. That being said I really don’t know anyone personally who is at that level. Track or racing, that’s another conversation. Just my observation.

I think computer controlled dynamic airfoils that optimize downforce based on AOA data are a huge asset for sure. A fixed “one size fits all”, not so much unless you have an engineer that has figured that out for a particular scenario and can manually manipulate them.

I believe the wings start to contribute significant downforce at around 120mph. I can’t speak to how well they since I’ve not ran the bike on the track without them to do a comparison but I have no front issues with it raising when I’m at speed and full on throttle and my wheelie control is off. I do crack 175 on the track and have not had any front stability issues. Probably more due to the rest of my setup and not wings.

The wings can take abuse. I dropped my bike in the garage right on it, no damage at all.
For the average street squid, the wings are probably pointless. I think the bike looks better without them anyway.

brad8266 said:

The wings can take abuse. I dropped my bike in the garage right on it, no damage at all.

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lol... same. I was amazed.

I too imagined something like, "computer controlled dynamic airfoils that optimize downforce based on AOA data" with less detail & without such correct terminology (hahaha) when I first saw F1 lap times vs. MotoGP lap times. The next year, fixed wings were out in motogp racing. I was surprised that a fixed position would be good in a steep lean, however seems so in racing.
In a straight acceleration motorcycles can only accelerate at a max of 1G without a wheelie bar. With wings they can go way passed that. So there's that.
Then there's the same 1G limitation in deceleration without pilot-as-air-foil and counterweight, so, dip the nose and now the down-force wing is an air-brake with fairly impressive results in certain speed brackets. So there's that too. An air-brake forcing the rear down would be better though.
Cornering - I'm starting to think it's not as complex as I may have imagined it at first; has to be less complex than flying in 3D. Straight inline downforce into centrifugal force is perhaps good within parameters. To me there is still some magic there that is not entirely agreed upon by many authors of how exactly all things considered make bikes do what motogp rider can do. Some of it seems against the calculated rules of what should be. And they keep pushing that. Something seems positive there.

Also I'm now realizing if you had said, "computer controlled dynamic airfoils" in the same position on the bike that could add downforce to the axis of gravity, you'd just be tipping the bike harder until you lowside. You'd need to add wheels to the side of the bike hahaha. Or these wings would have to somehow produce a force dynamic similar to current convention in a similar ratio.
? I do'no' what that looks like right now.

I have not run my winged bike without wings at speed either, though comparing an 1198, R1, & Pani V4 I feel at high speed it's not even remotely close. Now there's a lot of hardware and design difference in those, but the braking power and stability, let's say "comfort" and confidence at >170MPH is not even close for me. The V4 hands down is more capable as a total package in the fast air. What part of that is from wings? - no idea, there is also a lot of computer at work. I feel braking power from 6th to 3rd diving into San Donato - man that's some fun ..... I've never done any of this so extreme on previous bikes.
Would be an interesting test.

endodoc said:

So if we use the 80 lbs at 180 let’s use 20 lbs at 45. Now I know it’s not a linear curve but for the sake of conversation. Personally and I’m not an expert by any means but I have never had an issue with stability going straight so I’m going to go with “wings in a turn” to aid in planting the front.

On the straight, any downforce created by the wing will result in some speed degradation. You are bleeding off energy to create downforce. So let’s take our turn at 45. Now the wing is no longer horizontal due to bike lean so we are not really sure what the downforce distribution looks like in relation to the relative wind. Many things effect this so the question is, is there a noticeable difference in front end stability for a “spirited” street rider with the wings?

If it works you are effectively creating a front end load (tire patch contact)similar to trail braking without braking? I personally am no where near the limitations of a wingless bike that wings would do anything for me however if you have exhausted the limitations of wingless cornering, then I would concede that airfoil augmentation would be the next step. That being said I really don’t know anyone personally who is at that level. Track or racing, that’s another conversation. Just my observation.

I think computer controlled dynamic airfoils that optimize downforce based on AOA data are a huge asset for sure. A fixed “one size fits all”, not so much unless you have an engineer that has figured that out for a particular scenario and can manually manipulate them.

Click to expand...

Vbreeze said:

I too imagined something like, "computer controlled dynamic airfoils that optimize downforce based on AOA data" with less detail & without such correct terminology (hahaha) when I first saw F1 lap times vs. MotoGP lap times. The next year, fixed wings were out in motogp racing. I was surprised that a fixed position would be good in a steep lean, however seems so in racing.
In a straight acceleration motorcycles can only accelerate at a max of 1G without a wheelie bar. With wings they can go way passed that. So there's that.
Then there's the same 1G limitation in deceleration without pilot-as-air-foil and counterweight, so, dip the nose and now the down-force wing is an air-brake with fairly impressive results in certain speed brackets. So there's that too. An air-brake forcing the rear down would be better though.
Cornering - I'm starting to think it's not as complex as I may have imagined it at first; has to be less complex than flying in 3D. Straight inline downforce into centrifugal force is perhaps good within parameters. To me there is still some magic there that is not entirely agreed upon by many authors of how exactly all things considered make bikes do what motogp rider can do. Some of it seems against the calculated rules of what should be. And they keep pushing that. Something seems positive there.

Also I'm now realizing if you had said, "computer controlled dynamic airfoils" in the same position on the bike that could add downforce to the axis of gravity, you'd just be tipping the bike harder until you lowside. You'd need to add wheels to the side of the bike hahaha. Or these wings would have to somehow produce a force dynamic similar to current convention in a similar ratio.
? I do'no' what that looks like right now.

I have not run my winged bike without wings at speed either, though comparing an 1198, R1, & Pani V4 I feel at high speed it's not even remotely close. Now there's a lot of hardware and design difference in those, but the braking power and stability, let's say "comfort" and confidence at >170MPH is not even close for me. The V4 hands down is more capable as a total package in the fast air. What part of that is from wings? - no idea, there is also a lot of computer at work. I feel braking power from 6th to 3rd diving into San Donato - man that's some fun ..... I've never done any of this so extreme on previous bikes.
Would be an interesting test.

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Understand and agree with your assessment and hypothesis however you did give some feedback and your assessment was that at 170 you had more confidence and the V4 has more stability in fast air. You are just validating more of what’s been said with regard to package. The fact that your analysis involves upper triple digits on the Speedo and close track stability feedback relegates you to the 5% group. 95% of guys who bought winged bikes will never see that environment which brings us full circle on putting them on a street bike.

Hey I admit, I giggle at wings on cars all the time. Unless your driving an IMSA car on the street on your way to the track wings on a daily driver are somewhat of a head scratcher and the bikes are no different. It’s a “race inspired” selling point for the brand for 95% of the buyers. A side by side, winged vs non winged event would be interesting and I have no doubt that on the track the winged machine may show some advantages.

That’s good feedback on comparing non winged ducs vs winged. I definitely feel braking down from 170+ into a 180+ degree turn is very stable and I have no issues coming deep into hard braking zones. The bike is very stable. Maybe the wings really do help….

Wings work otherwise MotoGP would not have them, the question is the efficacy on a street bike at street speeds and on that point I believe that they are primarily a marketing gimmick. At high speed yes, but they are simply too small to be effective at typical street speeds. The SL wings are better but butt ugly and ridiculous, however look at the Aprilia RSGP for comparison and its wing is massive. At 170 sure, there will be an effect; put you hand out the car window at highway spends and you feel it. The simple version is that pressure goes up by the power of 2 as speed doubles.

When moving air - wind - is stopped by a surface - the dynamic energy in the wind is transformed to pressure. The pressure acting the surface transforms to a force

Fw = pd A
= 1/2 ρ v2 A
where
Fw = wind force (N)
A = surface area (m2)
pd = dynamic pressure (Pa)
ρ = density of air (kg/m3)
v = wind speed (m/s)

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The faster you go, the wings generate logarithmically increasing amounts of downforce but all the other aero components on the bike respond accordingly. That means aero becomes really critical at higher speeds. On a bicycle for example once you get above about 30ks all you are doing is fighting wind resistance, thats why top speed comparisons are a bit of a crap shoot, was the rider in a full tuck, elbows in? What kind of helmet, and full close fitting leathers vs a 2 piece, large frame or midget. Same with downforce, whats your body position, angle of attack (or how is the bike trimmed).

Add in subjectivity and bias which is all part of how a bike feels and you realise that its actually quite hard determine the exact effect of the wings without a wind tunnel ands a bazillion sensors. But if you like them and feel the difference then why not!

A note on the braking stability side, the wings effect is at its maximum just prior to braking and then diminishes rapidly as speed reduces, also logarithmically so by the time you are doing say 80mph the wings designed for 170 mph have probably "turned off" and are doing pretty much nothing.

The point I am making is that this is not simple, ideally you need adjustable control surfaces. Look at the vast amounts of money and expertise spent on aero in F1, just slapping on pair of fins to a bikes fairing is not exactly the acme of development!

Paul G said:

A note on the braking stability side, the wings effect is at its maximum just prior to braking and then diminishes rapidly as speed reduces, also logarithmically so by the time you are doing say 80mph the wings designed for 170 mph have probably "turned off" and are doing pretty much nothing.

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Agree but that is where the stability is needed. Once I’m at under 80 I’ve probably started turn in already anyway.

Paul G said:

Wings work otherwise MotoGP would not have them, the question is the efficacy on a street bike at street speeds and on that point I believe that they are primarily a marketing gimmick. At high speed yes, but they are simply too small to be effective at typical street speeds. The SL wings are better but butt ugly and ridiculous, however look at the Aprilia RSGP for comparison and its wing is massive. At 170 sure, there will be an effect; put you hand out the car window at highway spends and you feel it. The simple version is that pressure goes up by the power of 2 as speed doubles.

When moving air - wind - is stopped by a surface - the dynamic energy in the wind is transformed to pressure. The pressure acting the surface transforms to a force



The faster you go, the wings generate logarithmically increasing amounts of downforce but all the other aero components on the bike respond accordingly. That means aero becomes really critical at higher speeds. On a bicycle for example once you get above about 30ks all you are doing is fighting wind resistance, thats why top speed comparisons are a bit of a crap shoot, was the rider in a full tuck, elbows in? What kind of helmet, and full close fitting leathers vs a 2 piece, large frame or midget. Same with downforce, whats your body position, angle of attack (or how is the bike trimmed).

Add in subjectivity and bias which is all part of how a bike feels and you realise that its actually quite hard determine the exact effect of the wings without a wind tunnel ands a bazillion sensors. But if you like them and feel the difference then why not!

Click to expand...

Agree with most, but downforce increases exponentially with the square of speed.