Rear wing flex and FIA regulatory test 2021

[SiLo]

Maybe the easiest and most effective form of a test, would not be a static one. Using the rear facing camera with some known points on the wing could be used to measure any deflection?

[SmallSoldier]

Maybe the easiest and most effective form of a test, would not be a static one. Using the rear facing camera with some known points on the wing could be used to measure any deflection?

That’s one of the new tests been implemented... What I read is that the teams will have to place 12 marking points in the rear wing and the onboard camera will be used to determine how much the wing is flexing while in motion.


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[dans79]

Any structure deflects under load, perfectly rigid materials do not exist. The Mercedes wing also deflects. So the requirement that a wing shall not deflect is always subjective.

By defining a test load with a limit the Fia made it objective requirement. Thereby a wing that passed the test becomes legal. I do not see how a judge could rule otherwise.

They made it objective, so it was easier for the themselves to police the teams on a day to day basis.

However they have a rule that allows them to to make a subjective judgment and then change the objective as they see fit, if they feel the spirit of the rules are being violated.

3.9.9

In order to ensure that the requirements of Article 3.8 are respected, the FIA reserves the right to introduce further load/deflection tests on any part of the bodywork which appears to be (or is suspected of), moving whilst the car is in motion.

[dans79]

What I read is that the teams will have to place 12 marking points in the rear wing and the onboard camera will be used to determine how much the wing is flexing while in motion.

My linear algebra is a little rusty, but I think 12 points means they will be monitoring 4 of the 6 degrees of freedom the wing/uprights have.

[Xwang]

Any of our materials experts able to answer please, what would be the effect of cooling (or heating) the 'flexing' component prior to testing? If they were able to cool it with say co2 on the way to the test station would it stiffen up and pass the test at that time?

As far as I know a lot of materials lose strength when temperature rise.
So, hypothetically speaking, it could be possible to design a strut that complies the rules at ambient temperature and then becomes less stiff when hot exhaust gases pass around by putting the strut in the middle of the exhaust tube.
You have to be sure that:
1) thermal cycles do not degrade the material so that it get back its properties when engine is turned off
2) you can keep the temperature around the desired value when the car is running.
For sure it is difficult and costly, but if you manage to do that you can go to the FIA and ask for ever stricter tests in the parc fermé and still have your blending rear wing.
If FIA introduces, as it seems it is already doing, a test which measure the bending when you are running, you have to remove this trick.

[RZS10]

The earth is flat and humans never set a foot on the moon. That is easily "verfiable" with some online searches.

At this point i know that you're just being argumentative and disingenous since most of the other quoted parts you obviously chose to misread were about the verifiable timeline of events, which simply does not fit your very own theory.

A quite literal summary of the quotes of Tombazis in that article would be:
"We are looking at the wings, we hope that we can improve the test in the future since the current one does not represent the real world loads on the wings, but we do not want to rush it. It will take time but it's on our job list"

My reading of it is: "We want to improve the test but we do not want to rush the process of changing it and will take our time to make sure it represents the real life loads as closely as possible ( = it isn't ready)", whether one then calls it "job list" or "to-do-list" doesn't matter, it's the same thing.

This is of course an 'interpretation' but a very reasonable one that sticks very closely to what was said.

"We have a test ready but we're waiting for the right moment to introduce it." is a rather - liberal - interpretation, don't you think?

___________________

That’s one of the new tests been implemented... What I read is that the teams will have to place 12 marking points in the rear wing and the onboard camera will be used to determine how much the wing is flexing while in motion.

One thing i was wondering about is whether they will use two cameras or some dual lens camera because that would allow them to 'see' or interpret the movement of the markings in 3D in some software, or is it already possible to do that with just one camera and known distances measured from the lens to each point?

One possible way to do it could be "similar" to what i did in Photoshop...

When the car is stopped you mark where the points are, maybe lay a virtual grid into the plane of the endplate, then you compare it to the wing with max. deflection.
Run some lens correction and afterwards it's just some trigonometry between all the points, some of which would have 90°angles + some known points of reference:



Question is whether something like this would be precise enough without two cams that would allow a '3D' analysis.

[TwanV]

Sorry but what a non -topic(not the thread, the whole idea) ; it is absolutely impossible to police this stuff, all parts bend, and they can bend as much as the FIA scrutineering test allow them to bend end of story, as Chapman and Murray would attest. But changing procedures mid season because toto's team can't be bothered finding the limit because of their engine seems like a lot of hassle, cost and completely against the spirit of formula 1. Mercedes can design a wing like red bull can, can't they?

[SmallSoldier]

The earth is flat and humans never set a foot on the moon. That is easily "verfiable" with some online searches.

At this point i know that you're just being argumentative and disingenous since most of the other quoted parts you obviously chose to misread were about the verifiable timeline of events, which simply does not fit your very own theory.

A quite literal summary of the quotes of Tombazis in that article would be:
"We are looking at the wings, we hope that we can improve the test in the future since the current one does not represent the real world loads on the wings, but we do not want to rush it. It will take time but it's on our job list"

My reading of it is: "We want to improve the test but we do not want to rush the process of changing it and will take our time to make sure it represents the real life loads as closely as possible ( = it isn't ready)", whether one then calls it "job list" or "to-do-list" doesn't matter, it's the same thing.

This is of course an 'interpretation' but a very reasonable one that sticks very closely to what was said.

"We have a test ready but we're waiting for the right moment to introduce it." is a rather - liberal - interpretation, don't you think?

___________________

That’s one of the new tests been implemented... What I read is that the teams will have to place 12 marking points in the rear wing and the onboard camera will be used to determine how much the wing is flexing while in motion.

One thing i was wondering about is whether they will use two cameras or some dual lens camera because that would allow them to 'see' or interpret the movement of the markings in 3D in some software, or is it already possible to do that with just one camera and known distances measured from the lens to each point?

One possible way to do it could be similar to what i did in Photoshop

When the car is stopped you mark where the points are, then you compare it to the max. deflection.
Run some lens correction and afterwards it's just some trigonometry between all the points, some of which would have 90°angles + some known points of reference:



Question is whether something like this would be precise enough without two cams that would allow a '3D' analysis.

That would be a very good solution, but I doubt that it will be the way it’s implemented... My guess is that it will be way simpler than that and will depend on where the markings are located.

They will want to not only look at the “height” of the rear wing measured against the baseline when static, but they will probably add markings to the end plates and main plane to understand where the potential pivot point is, which there is still speculation on it’s location.

Regardless, the use of the inboard camera to measure this should be better than the physical test done with the car in an static position, specially if the movement isn’t linear vs load.


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[Hoffman900]

“Spirit” isn’t a rule.

There are two things here:

1) the flexing wings don’t meet the spirit of the rule, plain and simple. They do pass the test that enforces it.
2) the FIA has a rule that literally says they can change how they measure it at anytime.

The third thing is this has been talked about since last July. RedBull has had a shortened season and some of this season to get ahead of this, instead they doubled down. They go to every race weekend knowing they could be called out on this. If I were Toto, I’d rightfully would be making the same arguments. If I were Christian, I would be gaslighting, trying to change the narrative, and point out inconsistencies with the rule.

In racing, of you know your competitor is operating in the grey, you wait until it is inconvenient to them to politic or protest. It is this way at you local circle track, SCCA regional race, to F1.

Even if you were operating in the grey, people conveniently will make their stuff legal right before calling out their competitors. Racing is a blood bath and not for the kind hearted.

Lastly, there is the saying that is about as old as motorsports itself, “I know they’re cheating because I’m cheating, and they’re beating me”.

[SmallSoldier]

Sorry but what a non -topic(not the thread, the whole idea) ; it is absolutely impossible to police this stuff, all parts bend, and they can bend as much as the FIA scrutineering test allow them to bend end of story, as Chapman and Murray would attest. But changing procedures mid season because toto's team can't be bothered finding the limit because of their engine seems like a lot of hassle, cost and completely against the spirit of formula 1. Mercedes can design a wing like red bull can, can't they?

I guess that it depends on which side of the argument you want to be on... To avoid “Team Partisanship”, let’s say that there are 2 groups in this situation, the ones with wings that bend/flex and the ones without it, that way we avoid making it a Red Bull vs Mercedes situation.

The challenge really comes from the interpretation of the regulations, in which the Test isn’t the Rule... The rule is that body work (in which the rear wing falls in this category) has to be rigidly secured and with no degree of motion, specially for those parts that have an aerodynamic impact... Yes, the rules allow certain amount of flexibility since as you state the parts can not be 100% rigid, but what seems to be happening is that the group of teams making use of these flexible wings, have designed them in a way that they flex beyond what the tests can catch.

The fact that there are teams that don’t show the amount of movement that others do, is indication that the rear wings can be in fact made to have more rigidity than what is been done by the flex group... We have already had Binotto accepting that they are exploiting this to their advantage... The teams are knowingly and willingly trying to use Rear Wings that flex beyond what would be “natural” flex of the parts and therefore going against rule 3.8.

If the teams are capable to manufacturing such Wings (extremely clever), I’m sure that a test or set of tests that can clamp down on the practice can be also designed.


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[RZS10]

Given that there's teams with vast differences in budget (well not anymore, really) and manpower who supposedly have wings that "exploit" the rules i find it very hard to believe that any of those who supposedly have very rigid wings would struggle to build a more flexing wing, no?

[Big Tea]

The earth is flat and humans never set a foot on the moon. That is easily "verfiable" with some online searches.

At this point i know that you're just being argumentative and disingenous since most of the other quoted parts you obviously chose to misread were about the verifiable timeline of events, which simply does not fit your very own theory.

A quite literal summary of the quotes of Tombazis in that article would be:
"We are looking at the wings, we hope that we can improve the test in the future since the current one does not represent the real world loads on the wings, but we do not want to rush it. It will take time but it's on our job list"

My reading of it is: "We want to improve the test but we do not want to rush the process of changing it and will take our time to make sure it represents the real life loads as closely as possible ( = it isn't ready)", whether one then calls it "job list" or "to-do-list" doesn't matter, it's the same thing.

This is of course an 'interpretation' but a very reasonable one that sticks very closely to what was said.

"We have a test ready but we're waiting for the right moment to introduce it." is a rather - liberal - interpretation, don't you think?

___________________

That’s one of the new tests been implemented... What I read is that the teams will have to place 12 marking points in the rear wing and the onboard camera will be used to determine how much the wing is flexing while in motion.

One thing i was wondering about is whether they will use two cameras or some dual lens camera because that would allow them to 'see' or interpret the movement of the markings in 3D in some software, or is it already possible to do that with just one camera and known distances measured from the lens to each point?

One possible way to do it could be similar to what i did in Photoshop

When the car is stopped you mark where the points are, then you compare it to the max. deflection.
Run some lens correction and afterwards it's just some trigonometry between all the points, some of which would have 90°angles + some known points of reference:

https://s3.gifyu.com/images/image90b831c6b1bfa96a.png

Question is whether something like this would be precise enough without two cams that would allow a '3D' analysis.

That would be a very good solution, but I doubt that it will be the way it’s implemented... My guess is that it will be way simpler than that and will depend on where the markings are located.

They will want to not only look at the “height” of the rear wing measured against the baseline when static, but they will probably add markings to the end plates and main plane to understand where the potential pivot point is, which there is still speculation on it’s location.

Regardless, the use of the inboard camera to measure this should be better than the physical test done with the car in an static position, specially if the movement isn’t linear vs load.


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a Laser projector and 2 mirrors would do it if there was line of sight. Any movement would cause deflection and could easily to read with a receptor

[Hoffman900]

Given that there's teams with vast differences in budget (well not anymore, really) and manpower who supposedly have wings that "exploit" the rules i find it very hard to believe that any of those who supposedly have very rigid wings would struggle to build a more flexing wing, no?

It will likely effect balance, as pointed out above, in medium-high speed corners, so it’s not as simple as like DAS where you’re just reducing drag in a straight line.

So design, most surely could, but how much effort would it take to build the rest of the set up around it?

[peaty]

The earth is flat and humans never set a foot on the moon. That is easily "verfiable" with some online searches.

This is of course an 'interpretation' but a very reasonable one that sticks very closely to what was said.

That's your opinion, you think that it sticks very closely.

"We have a test ready but we're waiting for the right moment to introduce it." is a rather - liberal - interpretation, don't you think?

Again, that's your opinion. Tombazis even outlined the basics of the future test in that interview:

"The best deflection regulations for aero elasticity are the ones that most closely mimic the real load cases that a component can see on the track. So in other words, the force a wing sees is normally down and backwards, approximately, let's say, 40 degrees or so."

Now you go and compare that with the new test, which is basically similar to the old but tougher loads and the camera with the markers. Looks like they spend 10 month to come up with the new test! Super innovative and certainly solve all the problems Tombazis himself said the old test had.

You're free to think whatever you want, but the new test is not the one they had in mind in the first place. Bare in mind the new test is a variation of the old one, it came up 3 days after Hamilton mentioned the "bendy wings" and also remember that no Mercedes powered car, in theory, will be affected by it.
All coincidence, nothing to do with Mercedes.

P.S: I wonder how did they come up with the new loads and the 1.5x option if neccessary...

[RZS10]

It will likely effect balance, as pointed out above, in medium-high speed corners, so it’s not as simple as like DAS where you’re just reducing drag in a straight line.

So design, most surely could, but how much effort would it take to build the rest of the set up around it?

I just meant in general at the conceptual phase of the car design ... i don't believe that any team would be incapable to design a tilting wing.

a Laser projector and 2 mirrors would do it if there was line of sight. Any movement would cause deflection and could easily to read with a receptor

True, but they just mentioned using the cam and 12 points and i can't really wrap my head around on how they'd want to measure any forward/backwards movement with just one camera, especially of parts like the wing support.