Flexible wings controversy 2010

[747heavy]

would the difference in tire diameter not raise both ends of the car (front/rear) equal?
Sure the car will be higher, but the rake would not change.
I think what Marcus want´s to say is, the rake does not look consitent across the plank/skidblock. There seems to be a sharper transition starting ~1 mtr. from the front of the plank towards the rear.
10 mm of tolerance in reference plane height maybe???

[marcush.]

of course it has rake...
but you can see that the rake ends mysteriously at an angle right below the helmet of the driver and the underfloor is miraculously paralell to the ground till the leading edge of the splitter somehow...

[djos]

You guy's speculating about tricky cables etc are deluded!

I hope you got a good payout when you sued the charm school you attended!

I'm merely discussing possibilities.

You guy's are discussing fantasy's not reality, the cables you guys have spotted are nothing more than the control wiring for the adjustable flaps!

[djos]

i´d think this picture clearly shows the ferrari plank is anything but straight...you can see its almost paralell to the ground from the leading edge till some 1000mm and then rises up ...

Macrush, the plank is dead straight, the rake is creating an optical illusion:

[hollus]

I am not so sure about the kink in the plank. What we see is the clearance between the car flor and the track, we don't see the plank directly. Doesn't the floor become narrower just where it seems to have a kink? It could be a camera-light effect, as the camera is higher than the car floor...
Or it could be a proper bend, of course.

[tok-tokkie]

I have just held a straight edge against the screen & the plank separates from the straight edge from below the driver's head forwards. The comment about the reduction in plank width is not true - it is the same width from front to back. However the tub width does vary a lot as seen from the aerial shots of Webber's crash. Notice that the plank has two 80mm holes making it relatively easy to bend just where it appears to bend.

[marcush.]

there is no explanation for the wear pattern shown on the planks possible than having a kink in that famous say 700-900mm area were the two hole are situated.
now with the front 800mm you could run parallel to the ground and have the rear
remaining plank at an upward rake ...if this was 2400mm long (wheelbase -330mmleading edge of plank -800mm forward facing splitter area)we would see
roughly an additional 30mm of rear rideheight ....which would still be in the tolerance specified by the regs....

[avatar]

I am not so sure about the kink in the plank. What we see is the clearance between the car flor and the track, we don't see the plank directly. Doesn't the floor become narrower just where it seems to have a kink? It could be a camera-light effect, as the camera is higher than the car floor...
Or it could be a proper bend, of course.

I agree. I couldn't have much confidence judging the plank from that shot.

The camera angle is above the line of the plank (looking down on the car slightly), so the lip around the bib (the floor is slightly broader than the plank) & the widening of the floor out to it's "shoulder" is obscuring the horiz. line of the plank + the shape of the shadow cast by the floor/bodywork the throws [at least] my eye off even more.

That's not to say there's no kink there, but IMHO the camera angle's hight perspective (relative to the plank) is enough to bring the edge line of the floor in to play, much in the way we can see the top surface of the front wing.

[avatar]

As to MW's wear pattern - does look odd to me if there is no flexing going on.

The whole 'bib' area of the plank has reasonably even wear, but the rest of the plank does not - suggesting on average the bib area, but not the rest of the plank has been reasonably parallel to the floor.

This shouldn't be the case given the rake RBR seem to be running, unless the whole plank showed a similar pattern (*) - in which case this could otherwise be explained by the levelling of the rake under rear D/F at speed.

(*) slightly decreasing toward the rear

What the image seems to illustrate nicely is the front grounding more due to the rake, with the bib (as discussed by others) having more "give" in it when it hits the ground, flexing upwards as it does so, except at high speed, when rear aero-load makes it more likely to bottom out at at the rear.
Without the flexing, the leading edge of the plank is likely to wear beyond legal limits at the high rake.

Question (mildly off-topic):

On that photo of the underside of MW's car, is it just my eye, or is the (upper) floor at the back or the car significantly further from/higher than the plank than at the front?
I ask as this would cloud the judgement "actual" rake (i.e. rake of the plank governed by ride-height) v.s. the visible rake of the floor from photos taken from above the line of the plank itself....

[chasefreak]

Code: Select all

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=41884

can i get that video mentioned in the post above..... would like see wat these ppl r talking abt

[avatar]

Code: Select all

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=41884

can i get that video mentioned in the post above..... would like see wat these ppl r talking abt

The image/clip posted earlier shows the important bit - the Wing appears to tilt drastically from side to side:

In the video of the button/vettel incident, the wing doesn't just seem to unflex but it it appears (at least to me) that it tilts around an axis somewhere under where the support pylons meet the nose.

With one wingtip much closer to the ground than the other, could the asymmetrical downforce generated by the wing itself (and the vortices it sheds) have a correlative effect downstream that led to the sudden instability at the rear end that resulted in the accident?

Just my two cents ...

As you can see he was sideways almost before he tried to move out from behind button.

[forty-two]

I hesitate to offer an opinion anymore but since I agree totally with 747heavy I can't help but pipe up...and at least in my mind, I have to echo why would a small cable stand up so stiffly?

Why would you hesitate to offer an opinion anymore? It's precisely the debates like this one on this forum which interest me most.

I take 747's comment about teflon insulation being quite stiff (something, I might add, I very know little about), IF this cable was being used in a "wing adjust" capacity, you would likely want the cable to be able to pass through a tube without snagging, so a teflon lining on either the inside of the tube or the outside of the cable would be beneficial anyway. In other words, a teflon coating on a cable doesn't necessarily rule it out as a cable to be pulled rather than to have current running through it.

If it was to be used in some pulley like arrangement, would it not need to be flexible?...Of course that's just my opinion. and is worth exactly what you paid for it.

Well, that was my first thought too, but then I pondered it for a moment. Such a cable would presumably only need to move a few tens of millimetres at most in order to actuate the wing flaps, meaning that a pulley (and it's associated bearings etc) would be somewhat overkill. A simple rocker arrangement could equally be used with a far simpler (and perhaps lighter) mounting and bearing which would translate the vertical motion of the cable to a horizontal movement on a seperate cable running along the wing itself.

Taking this even further, (yes, I know this is a bit off the wall!) but if the RB6's front wing had a hidden internal carbon rod which ran horizontally accross the wing (maybe a single rod running all the way accross, perhaps two seperate halves), the cable in the pylons could be connected to pulleys on the rod in order to actuate the flaps. BUT (and here's what I'm getting at) the rod could be non circular in cross section, allowing it to have a different degree of flexibility depending upon the orientation of the rod, which would in-turn be adjustable by the driver in order to "actuate" the flaps.

video posted here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2160&p=195984#p195984

Great still, that's precisely the thing I was referring to in my earlier post.

Notice in particular how it seems to have two kinks in it. These kinks suggest to me that whatever it might be for, this cable is normally hooked over something inside the nosecone (be that a static mounting or a "pulling device" of some description I don't know.

What I can't fathom however is how these kinks could be explained by the "it's an electrical connection" argument. Surely, if this is for an electrical connection from the car, through the nosecone, into the FW, you would see two ends (one for each wing end) which if anything would be kinked only once (in order to bend the cable toward the car), not twice at the sort of spacing that would fit between the two pylons.

Whatever that is, it's normal route is up one pylon, across inside the nosecone, and back down the other pylon, it's not going from the wing to the SECU, it's going from one end of the wing to the other via the nosecone. Perhaps it's just a stiffener?

EDIT (Added last paragraph)

[forty-two]

1. If it is an electrical cable, why is it quite so stiff? Even solid core, 2.5mm flat twin and earth cable (as would comfortably carry 4Kw) would be difficult to make it stand upright over a span of 1 metre.

I don´t know if you have seen/used the kind of cable which is used in racing cars.
Normally it´s an aircraft spec cable, which uses a teflon isolation. These teflon isolations are quite stiff/ in comparsion to a PVC/rubber or silicone isolation on your houshold/computer cable.
I would expect, that you have more then used two wires (+/-) in this cable. It´s more like 5-6 IMHO, for position feedback to the ECU etc. If you twist these different wires and but them into some heat shrink, they become rather stiff.
But of course I could be wrong - as I don´t know for sure.

Why would a OD 6mm braided steel wire stand up like this?

I don´t know, what this cable/wire is/was, but I would think it is unlikely, that RBR would use such a device. But eveything is possible in motor racing.
After all, it´s such my personal opinion.

No, I have not used or encountered teflon insulated cable (to my knowledge at least). But that in and of itself does not explain all (to me at least).

As for how many conductors you might need, it would of course depend upon your priorities. Fewer conductors = less weight, but at the same time potentially a more complicated system which would potentially have more things to go wrong with it. At the same time, fewer conductors which rely on some form of temporary plug arrangement to facilitate FW replacement might be a good thing as it would in theory make the plug able to be smaller, lighter or more robust (in terms of weight per conductor).

If I were designing such a system, I think I would go for a symmetrical layout (i.e. one bunch of cables going to the left side of the wing, another bunch going to the right side). In each bunch I would have Two conductors for motor power, one for position instruction (like a servo-motor), and a fourth for position feedback.

[donskar]

Very interesting thread. Makes me ponder -- are:
1) the FIA inspectors totally out of it
2) the rules vague to the point that they are unenforceable
3) the designers so clever
???

[marcush.]

Of course every gramme counts so you will not have more wires than necessary and splice as late as possible..just to save wiring bulk.
For the feedback you need 2 wires for each actuater 1 wire .. the FIA will not accept to be able to govern only half of your adjustments !
So you need plus and minus ,you need a signal ordering the wingflap movement(possibly only one wire ,spliced up) and a further two wires giving feedback to the ECU to confrim the adaption.you could send the feedback of course on the signal wire ,depend ssreally what the ECU can handle and of course what you have
in terms of actuator intelligence or dumb.
with the low mount camera they had of course a harness to route down for theses as well and as you have to carry the pods anyways and the weight you may as well have it integrated in your loom anyways.