Virgin Racing VR-01 Cosworth

[PlatinumZealot]

Look at 15 seconds into the video!





This is a perfect example of a bending beam! lol.. The ends of the wing must bending downwards by over 3cm right there. Looks like a diving board..

Sometimes the calculations can be correct but if the material or quality of manufacturing is wrong/poor/poorly made then stuff like this can happen. Lol

The good side is that the wing is working! and at least it happened now and not in Bahrain!

[ringo]

They must have glued it together with animal fat.

[RacingManiac]

That's the problem with composite anyway, they are only good when you used them correctly...

[myurr]

Look at 15 seconds into the video!





This is a perfect example of a bending beam! lol.. The ends of the wing must bending downwards by over 3cm right there. Looks like a diving board..

Sometimes the calculations can be correct but if the material or quality of manufacturing is wrong/poor/poorly made then stuff like this can happen. Lol

The good side is that the wing is working! and at least it happened now and not in Bahrain!

Good picture, but look more closely. The centre of the wing is not level but is in line with the right half of the wing.

Basically the right mount (from the cars point of view, on the left in the picture) has failed so that the wing looks like /\ centred on the one good mount.

[Mr Alcatraz]

Look at 15 seconds into the video!





This is a perfect example of a bending beam! lol.. The ends of the wing must bending downwards by over 3cm right there. Looks like a diving board..

Sometimes the calculations can be correct but if the material or quality of manufacturing is wrong/poor/poorly made then stuff like this can happen. Lol

The good side is that the wing is working! and at least it happened now and not in Bahrain!

Good picture, but look more closely. The centre of the wing is not level but is in line with the right half of the wing.

Basically the right mount (from the cars point of view, on the left in the picture) has failed so that the wing looks like /\ centred on the one good mount.

Good call hawk-eyes myurr, and smik'. Bottom line good thing it happened here and not in Bahrain. which to me brings up an interesting point.
--- happens Bulk is coming back from an injury that was caused (arguably IMVHO) by a slightly under-funded that happened to win the whole shooting match team. There is no way in hell they can let META, USF1, or any other Stefan into a world championship race weekend without testing extensively beforehand.
Here me now, and understand me later. Max would not let this go unchallenged. He brought a very real and pragmatic view (when it came to safety) to the table. Start three races into the season, with only passing a crash test and procedural qualifications super license for drivers, & etc into a dogfight?
Not on his watch! No freakin’ way He was set-up by Bernie!
Am I acting paranoid

[horse]

Basically the right mount (from the cars point of view, on the left in the picture) has failed so that the wing looks like /\ centred on the one good mount.

I'm not so sure it was the mounting as the right hand side (looking at the front) dropped before the left hand side:





I would say it (the wing itself - possibly each end separately) snapped at the mountings while undergoing heavy vibration as the track there seemed particularly bumpy. Two separate failures under similar stresses could point to a design failure.

[segedunum]

Thankfully, despite my scepticism as to how ready CFD is, I would lean towards this being a manufacturing fault rather than anything fundamental with what they've designed. If they have any more it then will be a worry because that indicates a design failure............and then you worry about what else will go.

I can't see that a mount has failed here. The wing does look as if it has simply bowed under stress (it looked odd to me all the way down the straight), fails on the right initially, as we look at it, then fails on the left at the end of the straight and that has then cascaded a full failure. It looks rather odd.

[dumrick]

Now, let's take a closer look:



The tips of the 2 halfs of the wing are already scratching the tarmac, so some kind of failure has already happened here. Both halfs are drooping down straight, not bent, and both pillars are bent inwards so it was a longitudinal crack on the wing itself somewhere between the pillars.

Looking close, I can swear I see the break close to the right pillar of the wing.

This is the tricky part. The aero loads on the wing are higher between the pillars and the ouside of the wing, so the wing was being able to deal with those. What this leads us to? Being a guy with some experience on the behaviour of metals rather than carbon fibre, it does look to me like a fatigue induced failure: it happens on the only zone (between the pillars) where the wing is submitted to alternate loads passing the neutral point (its unstressed shape) and close to the pillar. The problem is, the little information I'm able to find about fatigue behaviour of carbon fibre say that it's lifecycle is virtually infinite. Some studies I found on the netzz concerned this issue but were available for subscribers only. I figure there are many members on this forum than could enlighten me on if carbon fibre experiences any fatigue...

Another pic:



Since the wing is a fairly rigid body (well, when we see those super slow motions...) surely the center of the wing should experience considerable stress just cancelling the aero load moments. But if that stress would be the guilty one, the rupture should happen right in middle of the wing (and, you know, I can swear I can see it closer to the right pillar...).

Naturally, it could also be a fabrication problem but, if that was known to be the case, there would be no sense on stopping the car for the remainder of the day, since I can't simply believe the team had a single nosecone. Same case with Wirth's mounting problem excuse, besides I can't possibly imagine how the mounting of the nose in the chassis could induce the failure we saw.


Concerning the total failure after the turn, that easy to explain (ufff...). The pillars were bent because the rigid and simmetrical nature of the wing usually cancels the moments around the z axis. By braking around the middle, the wing ceased to do so and pillars are not designed to withstand this kind of bending. So, they finally broke, seemingly on the pillar/wing interface.

[xpensive]

I agree with Dumrick, think it's obvious that the wing section between the pillars gave in.

This is interesting, when that section is decided by the FIA in order not to produce any downforce, which in turn has led to these monstrous contraptions for front wings. No sane engineer would ever think of making a simply supported beam skinny in the middle, would he?

With the shape of that section already being decided upon, perhaps Virgin's CFD underestimated the front wing DF?
Or choice of material proved to be Wirth-less?

[Mr Alcatraz]

Good morning Gent's
What would you guess the drag coefficient of styrofoam with carbon-fiber color veneer paint on it that size using rough dimentions is?
My CFD is down! :^o

[Richard]

How does anyone know if this is an error in estimating aero load (CFD), or the dynamic loading, or combining those, or material behaviour assumed in the FEA, or carbon manufacturing defect, or a resin defect, or a kiln defect, or contamination, or a post manufacturing bash (dropped it!), or something else. Also, it could be a combination of many of the above, none of which was deemed a failure in isolation?

[Saribro]

It was probably just gremlins.

[Sawtooth-spike]

If virgin want to test this morning maybe the should pop over and see Red bull, Apparently they give you wings

Sorry

[Clubber]

If virgin want to test this morning maybe the should pop over and see Red bull, Apparently they give you wings

Sorry

That's awful and yet it really made me laugh

[cooper-climax]

First off I move that Sawtooth-Spike be banned for that awful post . (I should probably be banned too cos I laughed.)


Regarding the fatigue resistance of CF, I used to make fishing rods out of the stuff. In my very un-technical way I look at it like this. All a fishing rod does is bend, and with the fibres correctly aligned, can take thousands upon thousands of cycles. However, it is very vulnerable to stress risers. I have seen a tiny chip in the resin that didn't appear to affect the carbon at all, cause complete failure in very short order.

My guess, and it is very much a guess, is that it was either a manufacturing of installation fault. The stresses in that area should be fairly easy to calculate, and the performance of CF plies is well understood. However it would be fairly easy to miss a ply in the lay-up, of damage the wing in transit or installation.