Unbreakable coatings for F1 cars...

[Hamymac]

I don't know how far or how fast news of this product has traveled... but an unbreakable spray coating on carbon fiber would, it seems to me, help to prevent the kind of splintering that is prevalent in F1 impacts... thus reducing the chance of injury to drivers and damage to cars and tyres. It could be a means of capturing flying debris before it, well, flies.
The video shows the product in action...
http://www.wimp.com/sprayunbreakable/
I am not affiliated with it, I just wonder if anyone thinks this, or some form of compound rubberized paint might be of benefit to the sport.

[Moose]

I don't know how far or how fast news of this product has traveled... but an unbreakable spray coating on carbon fiber would, it seems to me, help to prevent the kind of splintering that is prevalent in F1 impacts... thus reducing the chance of injury to drivers and damage to cars and tyres. It could be a means of capturing flying debris before it, well, flies.
The video shows the product in action...
http://www.wimp.com/sprayunbreakable/
I am not affiliated with it, I just wonder if anyone thinks this, or some form of compound rubberized paint might be of benefit to the sport.

There's nothing particularly special about this coating - it's just exploiting the well known behaviours and advantages of composite materials. Composite materials are so wonderful because they get to share both compressive strength (in this case the breeze block), and tensile strength (in this case the rubber like coating).

Carbon fibre is so strong exactly because of the exact same principal - it's sharing the characteristics of the carbon fibres, and the epoxy that binds it all together.

What a composite material will not do is make something "unbreakable". Instead, it'll just make something with lots of nice properties (strength being one of them). This product almost certainly wouldn't give CF any nicer properties than it already has, and if it does, it almost certainly comes with some other penalty (e.g. I fully expect that this stuff is pretty dense, and would require removing so much structural material to make the car light enough that it would be basically useless).

[DiogoBrand]

It probably would add a lot of weight, and also reduce the car's ability to absorb impact, wich it does when the bodywork shatters. You can clearly see when they drop the coated brick that it doesn't shatter, and that allows for very little impact absorption. Also pieces of shattered CF are very unlikely to represent any risk.

[n_anirudh]

Been thinking about this with regards to F1 cars, where the crash structure crumples taking the impact and protecting the monocoque. if the car is coated with this material, the impact energy has to be dissipated somewhere and the car may rebound back from the barriers etc.

Having said that, a piece of carbon fibre penetrated a sauber or a STR cockpit in malaysia a few years ago and teams now add a zylon coating over the carbon fibre.

[theblackangus]

It seems we need to get to something with carbon fiber strength and lightness, but that shatters into small pieces like safety glass. This would provide lots of energy absorption but with very low risk factor.

[ChrisM40]

People are misinterpreting this. In this case its not about making it stronger, its about holding all together. The soft coating simply holds the shattered Carbon Fibre together, so that it wont fly around as millions of sharp shards. Think of a broken LCD screen, its all held together by the plastic top layer.

[theblackangus]

People are misinterpreting this. In this case its not about making it stronger, its about holding all together. The soft coating simply holds the shattered Carbon Fibre together, so that it wont fly around as millions of sharp shards. Think of a broken LCD screen, its all held together by the plastic top layer.

So isn't that a catch 22?

If you held the pieces together do you create more dangerous larger pieces?

[bdr529]

I'v mention this product before, It's from AERO Advanced Paint Technology http://rethinkpaint.com/
You could think of it as a vinyl rap, but with paint, would be an easy way to describe it

video 1) http://rethinkpaint.com/site/templates/ ... tomer.webm
video 2) http://rethinkpaint.com/site/templates/ ... entist.mp4




IERUS Technologies, Inc. features antenna embedded in AERO™ Advanced Paint Technology at the 2015 Space & Missile Defense Symposium
http://rethinkpaint.com/news/ierus-and- ... symposium/

[JakeP]

There is silicon carbide available in like a "pre-preg" form which is the first layer down in the mold. This would give the part a real high resistance to abrasion ideal for under-body parts.