HALO Approved for 2018

[adrianjordan]

The screen would be better IMHO. Hopefully it can be brought in with a future set of regulations.

[bauc]

Speaking of the HALO, the McLaren's chief engineering officer Matt Morris has explained that his team had to make unexpected changes to its chassis after encountering some problems with early mock-up designs.

"It has been a big challenge," said Morris. "The loads are very, very high.

"We always knew it was going to be a challenge and we invested some time and money up front to do quite a lot of test pieces.

"Obviously you don't want to build a complete chassis, but we built various test pieces where we had dummy halos, parts of halos, full halos, and testing how the interfaces would behave.

"We found some issues but we planned early enough so we could react to those issues and catch the main chassis, which we did.

"It was close. I am not saying we breezed through it, and there were quite a few heart-stopping moments when doing the static tests that comes in from an oblique angle - where it takes the weight of a London Bus.

"When you see that test going on it is pretty scary with the amount of load going in there."

Morris said that the extremes of the test means it is possible that some outfits may hit trouble trying to get through.

"It will be interesting to see if anyone has any problems," he said. "It is a pretty tough test so it wouldn't surprise me if people have issues.

"I hope they don't because we want everyone in winter testing, but it has been an interesting challenge."

Morris also explained that the allowance of fairings and the way the halo is incorporated around the rear mounts may mean different teams' designs "may look a little bit different cosmetically".

McLaren's aero chief Peter Prodromou thinks there could some interesting solutions as teams work on minimising losses in this area.

"Aero wise it is certainly not penalty free, so I think there is a challenge there to either cope with it in the first instance, let's call it damage limitation, and afterwards think about opportunity and exploitation," he said.

"It does open up some avenues that possibly are interesting to look at - and I am sure there are going to be a variety of different solutions out there.

"The scope is quite limited as you have this allowance around the basic shape, but there is opportunity there for aerodynamicists."

[J.A.W.]

One situation where the halo will be the best solution is head on in to tyre barriers. We've seen cases of the cars burying in to the barrier up to the driver's head. Kovalainen in Spain 2008 comes to mind. The halo will keep a clear space around the driver in such cases.

"Best"?

Then kindly explain how you envisage the halo bettering the aero-screen - (as shown in the vid posted above),
-in this specific instance..

[Just_a_fan]

Then kindly explain how you envisage the halo bettering the aero-screen - (as shown in the vid posted above),
-in this specific instance..

Let's turn it around. Please kindly tell us what loads the aero screen has been designed, engineered and tested to withstand. Show that these parameters exceed those required by the FIA as shown here:

[jjn9128]

Let's turn it around. Please kindly tell us what loads the aero screen has been designed, engineered and tested to withstand. Show that these parameters exceed those required by the FIA as shown here:
https://www.formula1.com/content/fom-we ... 483104.jpg

I'd give up on it mate. These threads are the definition of a circular argument. People make claims based on their feelings and when corrected or pointed towards evidence to the contrary just repeat the same claims 2 pages down. There are comment sections on websites where people are more willing to see the rationale and engineering behind the halo than this technical forum.

Evidence for halo - FIA press conference, FIA technical regulations, video evidence of test cases, press comments from high ranking engineers - Allison, Morris..etc about it's strength and how scary the load cases are.

Evidence for screen/deflector - test run on an oval and in a simulator.

[NathanOlder]

I guess if we have no figures yet on the aero screen, we cant say the Halo is the best as we dont know yet. for all we know (just for arguments sake) The Aero screen can hold the weight of 2 London Busses
I know that surely wont be the case, so comparing the 2 is a little premature at this stage. All we can compare is what it looks like from outside the car, and what it would look like as a driver. And after seeing the Scott Dixon run on an oval at night, I feel its 2.0 to the Aero Screen on those 2 points.

The whole "Sickness" thing Vettel was on about with the Red Bull screen was rubbish IMO. I guess he never drives a road car then ? or would never be able to do LeMans. I reckon it was just a reason to stop Red Bull getting their idea in, and i can see why Ferrari/Vettel wouldn't want that. If anyone gained most with the Red Bull Screen, it would be Red Bull themselves.

[J.A.W.]

Then kindly explain how you envisage the halo bettering the aero-screen - (as shown in the vid posted above),
-in this specific instance..

Let's turn it around...

Or, lets not, "turn it around".
& you simply answer the polite query, as best you can - for the specific instance - per your assertion.

[jjn9128]

I guess if we have no figures yet on the aero screen, we cant say the Halo is the best as we dont know yet. for all we know (just for arguments sake) The Aero screen can hold the weight of 2 London Busses
I know that surely wont be the case, so comparing the 2 is a little premature at this stage. All we can compare is what it looks like from outside the car, and what it would look like as a driver. And after seeing the Scott Dixon run on an oval at night, I feel its 2.0 to the Aero Screen on those 2 points.

The whole "Sickness" thing Vettel was on about with the Red Bull screen was rubbish IMO. I guess he never drives a road car then ? or would never be able to do LeMans. I reckon it was just a reason to stop Red Bull getting their idea in, and i can see why Ferrari/Vettel wouldn't want that. If anyone gained most with the Red Bull Screen, it would be Red Bull themselves.

THE FIA "SHIELD", RED BULL "AEROSCREEN" AND INDY "DEFLECTOR" ARE DIFFERENT CONCEPTS!!!

I can see the compound curvature and thinner screen of the shield having more issues with vibration and visual distortion, as Vettel reported, than a 1/2" thick single curvature screen of the deflector. In an interview with Jeff Horton he describes how the supplier recommended a constant radius screen for that very reason. The example of a road car is entirely fatuous - by comparison to the racecar screen a car windscreen is virtually a flat plane.

The curvature of the aeroscreen and deflector were more closely matched - and Ricciardo noted the same things as Dixon - a requirement for increased driver cooling and a lack of buffeting and noise. BUT the aeroscreen failed the FIA tyre tests at 15degrees because the rear mounts of the top support hoop merged with the chassis lower down than the halo does. So the tyre collided with the helmet, also the helmet could collide with the hoop in certain crash scenarios.

[Just_a_fan]

Then kindly explain how you envisage the halo bettering the aero-screen - (as shown in the vid posted above),
-in this specific instance..

Let's turn it around...

Or, lets not, "turn it around".
& you simply answer the polite query, as best you can - for the specific instance - per your assertion.

The halo was originally designed and tested to stop a 20kg wheel/tyre at 225km/h. The load tests specified by the FIA include a 46kN load from straight on. That's just over 4.6 tonnes force for those using old money. It's also about the lateral force that the main roll hoop is required to withstand. The last time a roll hoop failed was in Bianchi's crash and that was an outlier in terms of F1 accidents. So we can say that in all normal F1 accidents, including Alonso's terrifying flying roll last year, the roll hoop has survived. It's entirely reasonable to look at the halo and say it will survive similar accidents. Submarining in to the tyre barrier is a large load but not 46kN because, luckily, the nose and the tyres themselves absorb a lot of energy.

As we know nothing about the aero screen other than it looks nice, we can't say anything other than a t looks nice. If you can provide us with technical info regarding the loads the screen is designed to accommodate then we can compare them.

It's worth pointing out that the FIA aero screen was designed at somewhat less than the halo and it failed the tests. It's much meatier than the Indy aero screen, which begs the question of how well the Indy screen would do in the tyre test.

So back to the only question that needs to be answered: what force will the Indy screen take before breaking?

[NathanOlder]

Indeed. I guess we will find out at some point. Its also worth finding out how many of the 80 wheels have come unattached in the last 5 years . Weve had about 500 sessions in the last 5 years, and 80 wheels in each session so thats about 40,000 wheels in 5 years. How many of those have come unattached?
At a guess I'd say less than 0.1%, and then that 0.1% need to bounch across the track which is at a guess a 1 in 5 chance so now its 0.02% then we need another car to be on the part of track which the wheel is bouncing ect ect ect which brings me back to the question..... why are we even doing this?

[jjn9128]

Are you trolling right now??? The halo isn't just designed for wheel impacts... watch the video the FIA released detailing the halo. It's designed to reduce risk of head injury for a number of cases - where in the last 2 decades all that's separated surviving a crash or not has been luck.

Car-to-environment:


Car-to-car:

[Tim.Wright]

Indeed. I guess we will find out at some point. Its also worth finding out how many of the 80 wheels have come unattached in the last 5 years . Weve had about 500 sessions in the last 5 years, and 80 wheels in each session so thats about 40,000 wheels in 5 years. How many of those have come unattached?
At a guess I'd say less than 0.1%, and then that 0.1% need to bounch across the track which is at a guess a 1 in 5 chance so now its 0.02% then we need another car to be on the part of track which the wheel is bouncing ect ect ect which brings me back to the question..... why are we even doing this?

Consider that road death probabilities are in the order of 0.01% and this is considered too high. Then there's the fact that debris strikes are one of the the primary causes of injury/death in open wheel racing in the last decade.

[adrianjordan]

I still think that logically the optimum design would have a solid hoop, like the halo, around the top and then something like the aeroscreen between the hoop and the chassis, perhaps then with thinner support struts supporting the front section of the hoop.

[NathanOlder]

@jjn9128

Im not trolling, please remind me how many of those drivers in the videos you posted missed races or died ? They were close calls much like a car being T-Boned, the nose of 1 car is a couple of inches from the driver.

As for debry being dangerous, the indy aero screen will stop all body parts, the only unknown is the wheel which like i said is very uncommon.

Maybe just put the driver in square boxes so nothing can fall off. Why stop at the halo ?

[jjn9128]

I personally don't like viewing fatal incidents, and certainly find posting them to make a point is crass. My point was that it is sheer good fortune that none of those accidents resulted in severe injuries - though Kovalainen received a concussion, and research is highlighting how any concussive injury can increase the risk of developing dementia. It's why Dario Franchitti had to retire.

These were also some of the accidents the FIA took and put through simulations with and without the halo. Altering positions slightly for the worst outcome to test the halo's viability. e.g. had the Viso impact happened 30cm closer to the cockpit, without the halo = fatality, with the halo it is a survivable crash. That's why the halo is designed for 16x the static weight of the car, not to protect from a wheel or winglet.