active suspension or not?

[mariano.torre.gomez]

is this against the actual rules?

Gordon realised that the authorities had to accept that at some points during a race, any car’s ground
clearance is going to be less than the 6 cm minimum, simply because of the effects of braking, or roll on
corners, etc. His radical solution concept – which he said came as a sudden illumination after a long period
of worrying at the problem – took advantage of this. Knowing that any driver-operated, mechanical device
to alter the ground clearance was illegal, he focused on the physical forces that act on a car in motion. The
braking and cornering forces he felt unable to work with because of their asymmetrical effects on the car,
but the downforce pressure from airflow over a fast moving car will, if the car is well designed
aerodynamically, push the car down equally over its whole length and width. The design challenge,
therefore, as Gordon interpreted it, was to let the natural downforce push the car down at speed, and then
somehow to keep it down when it slowed for corners, but allow the car to return to 6 cm ground clearance
at standstill. Gordon had therefore framed the problem as one of sustaining a temporary lowering of the
car, from natural forces, only whilst it was at racing speeds.
The ingenious solution that he developed incorporated hydro-pneumatic suspension struts at each wheel,
connected to hydraulic fluid reservoirs. As the car went faster, the aerodynamic downforce pushed the body
lower on its suspension and the hydraulic fluid in each suspension strut was pushed out into the reservoirs.
The trick then was to find a way of letting the fluid return to the suspension struts only very slowly when
the car slowed down. At cornering speeds, the suspension would stay low, but on slowing down and
stopping at the end of the race, the fluid would return from the reservoirs to the suspension struts, giving
the required 6 cm ground clearance. Gordon and his team developed such a system, using devices such as
micro-filters borrowed from medical technology. The hydro-pneumatic suspension system is an example of
radical innovation arising through framing the problem in a particularly focused way and then working
creatively with basic physical forces.

[hardingfv32]

Not against the rules, but how does it differ from just restriction shock rebound? What are the negative effects of that?

Brian

[DaveW]

Not against the rules, but how does it differ from just restriction shock rebound? What are the negative effects of that?

Logic would suggest that it is not active. Whether it violates the current rules depends on how, exactly, ride height is restored, I guess.

I suspect that the concept is attempting to yield rather more accurate ride height control without compromising damper performance than can be achieved using damping characteristics to jack a car.

[thisisatest]

since the linkages are very progressive, you could have the low, low speed rebound set very firm, but with a specific threshold, one that would likely occur in regular suspension use further down the travel.
but i think it's illegal anyways, somewhere in the rules it says that very restrictive suspension settings to control ride height are banned. i'll look it up.