Anti-Porpoising damper, return of J-damper, inerter, mass tuned damper, and driver safety.

[yamahasho]

Hello all, great forum, for almost the entire year there was a lot of talk about porpoising, teams attempted solutions like harder suspension or higher ride height hasn't really helped much. Also in my opinion the reintroduction of ground effects has made things worse, not to mention the j-damper was banned. But history always tells us, old ideas, trends tend to come back but in different ways as technology gets better.

So in a effort to improve safety for the driver, to me it's better to put a iteration of the j-damper on the steering column or on the rack and pinion on the same axis. Excuse my crude sketches:



The mass could be anywhere really, all the way up to the steering wheel and can be tuned manually by the driver or not.

Another way is simply inject air or magnetize in a varying cycle on the current shocks based on the frequency produced and needed during rebound. I believe drive hydraulic or air assist is not banned.



If F1 does allow magnetic fluids used in road cars, here's another version.
Fluid version:


Non-fluid double acting electromagnetic damper.


As a inerter and generator:


Any of these would offer more safety to the driver and a more stabilized steering. I believe it should be legal since it's on a single axis. But who knows.

[Jolle]

Why would steering dampener help against bouncing?
As far as I know, for 4 wheel racers, the steering inputs don’t need a damper like motorbikes.

[yamahasho]

Why would steering dampener help against bouncing?
As far as I know, for 4 wheel racers, the steering inputs don’t need a damper like motorbikes.

Hello Jolle, thank you for your feedback. It’s a part of the suspension as well which would have a huge impact on bouncing, aka porpoising, due to its inertial effect, better than the allowed mechanical springs and general dampers they allow now.

It’s just an old idea reinvented for current issues. Not a lot of folks would fork out $20k for a dampener.

[Tommy Cookers]

doesn't rack & pinion PAS have onboard friction generation for damping ?

[Airshifter]

doesn't rack & pinion PAS have onboard friction generation for damping ?

It seems to me that doing something like that would be counterproductive. Intentionally increasing mechanical friction just increases the need for hydraulic assist.

To the best of my knowledge the current system use valving alone to regulate input effort and feedback. There is a video with Peter Windsor and Scarbs detailing the current system that mentions how electric assist would make more sense in this day and age.

[Greg Locock]

You do need a bit of friction or damping in the rack, which you naturally get with HPAS - adjusted using the screw that preloads the rack against the pinion. With a typical EPAS you first of all have to subtract out all the friction and damping from the motor and reduction gear and ballscrew, by using feed forward, and then you have to add some back in to make the steering stable.

As to the suggestions in the first post... Steering system irrelevant, dampers illegal, inerter illegal.

[Tommy Cookers]

You do need a bit of friction or damping in the rack, which you naturally get with HPAS - adjusted using the screw that preloads the rack against the pinion. With a typical EPAS you first of all have to subtract out all the friction and damping from the motor and reduction gear and ballscrew, by using feed forward, and then you have to add some back in to make the steering stable.

makes sense to me
my cheap new car steering seemed a bit restless - this went as tyre friction (and toe) settled in
maybe the behaviour pattern will repeat with new tyres

[Greg Locock]

I have heard that some car manufacturers basically take the default calibration of the EPAS and just fiddle with the overall gain. Others have a very standard parametised custom table. Others fiddle about with everything and add new features. The software is in several levels, everyone gets access to the top, and then depending on other things, you get access to the deeper layers. OEMs get no access to the fundamental layers which turn boost requests into safe motor drive signals.

The feedforward compensation is interesting, get it wrong one way and you get no feel, get it wrong the other way and it feels like the wheel is driving itself.

[Rodak]

I would suggest yamahasho take a break (or, even better, a brake).

[johnny comelately]

I would suggest yamahasho take a break (or, even better, a brake).

That is an unnecessary remark.
Such approaches stifle discussion and to a newcomer is bordering on rude.
Thinking outside the box is what produces progress.

[CMSMJ1]

Hello all, great forum, for almost the entire year there was a lot of talk about porpoising, teams attempted solutions like harder suspension or higher ride height hasn't really helped much. Also in my opinion the reintroduction of ground effects has made things worse, not to mention the j-damper was banned. But history always tells us, old ideas, trends tend to come back but in different ways as technology gets better.

So in a effort to improve safety for the driver, to me it's better to put a iteration of the j-damper on the steering column or on the rack and pinion on the same axis. Excuse my crude sketches:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/523 ... 6bf0_b.jpg

The mass could be anywhere really, all the way up to the steering wheel and can be tuned manually by the driver or not.

Another way is simply inject air or magnetize in a varying cycle on the current shocks based on the frequency produced and needed during rebound. I believe drive hydraulic or air assist is not banned.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/523 ... af93_c.jpg

If F1 does allow magnetic fluids used in road cars, here's another version.
Fluid version:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/523 ... cdf7_z.jpg

Non-fluid double acting electromagnetic damper.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/523 ... 4565_z.jpg

As a inerter and generator:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/523 ... 44eb_z.jpg

Any of these would offer more safety to the driver and a more stabilized steering. I believe it should be legal since it's on a single axis. But who knows.

The driver needs the feel - interfering with it with a J damper is surely counterproductive to that most basic requirement of the driver - to have the contact with the tyres/track fed to him as undilute as possible?

[Tommy Cookers]

I have heard that some car manufacturers basically take the default calibration of the EPAS and just fiddle with the overall gain. Others have a very standard parametised custom table. Others fiddle about with everything and add new features. The software is in several levels, everyone gets access to the top, and then depending on other things, you get access to the deeper layers. OEMs get no access to the fundamental layers which turn boost requests into safe motor drive signals.
The feedforward compensation is interesting, get it wrong one way and you get no feel, get it wrong the other way and it feels like the wheel is driving itself.

good info (now captured for me)

[yamahasho]

You could put the flywheels in front of the steering rack so it won't interfere with the driver. However, given all the talk about EPS and EPAS, you could use the same system to calculate torque generated by the bump then during rebound apply that calculated torque which would be applied to the tie rod link, basically resisting the rebound, something like this.



Same as what an inerter does but now applying it to the angle change and velocity of that change of the steering link. It goes against conventional orientation of the inner tie rod, it will now rotate in the x-axis. Engineers would have to figure out how to deal with the translation motion, since you don't want to move the heavy motor with the link, I hit on that in another thread. But with the half gear, moon shape, it shouldn't be too hard. You can hit the track curbs a lot harder without unsettling the car or the tire contact patch.

It’s better than a than conventional dampers since those only account for various range of frequencies unlike a inerter which does dampening with each bump event, storing the kinetic energy. Obviously it would be useful to use this during braking and accelerating. Not much you can do with the rear though but something may come to mind.

If they haven't already. They should put the inerter under the seat if propoising is that bad, use that stored energy for something, right?, so rebound oscillations would be reduced in a shorter time. Would it be a part of the steering or suspension? It's up to which way you want to argue the rules.

[drd9838]

Inerter dampers, not legal in F1 as far as I know.

[yamahasho]

Inerter dampers, not legal in F1 as far as I know.

Oh for sure, probably, but depends on how you interpret the ban since it says inerters are prohibited in response to suspension elements and I believe I put this as a steering inerter.

But for arguments sake many posters have said pretty much every idea gets banned eventually.

I think instead of the FIA just banning driver aids they should use them like the DRS system is used. A few examples:

1) instead of banning ABS (anti lock braking) allow drivers behind to use it to aid overtaking and braking off line say in the marble area.

2) instead of banning TCS, traction control or any Yaw system or Vectoring system, allow drivers behind to use TCS out of a turn to allow overtakes and off line racing.

3) instead of using DRS make an anti-DRS so behind drivers can go on different racing line knowing they have more downforce.

4) I say ban DRS altogether, or regulate it dynamically, i mean not allowing faster drivers behind to use DRS if their last 1 to 5 lap times are faster than the car ahead.

Or do it like Indy car, having a certain number of seconds for DRS like push-to-pass. This could cut down on DRS trains.

Or not allowing DRS if more than 3 cars are within 1 second of each other or limiting the time they have DRS in DRS trains, so each driver would not know when the driver behind will use their allocated DRS.