Referring to the part I highlighted - Have you ever seen one of those videos of people throwing playing cards across the room and cutting fruit up? Or chopsticks sticking into wood? Tornadoes and hurricane effects showing wooden posts embedded into buildings and cars. You can even hurt yourself with a drinkng straw if it catches you just right.Tim.Wright wrote:I disagree slightly with your mechanism. I think a kevlar wall strong enough will buckle the barrier (or lightpost) before it builds up enough force to pierce the wall. The advantage you have over these long slender objects is that a one ton racecar will always be able to buckle it by hitting it end on. If this barrier had hit a pipe on the roll structure exactly that would have happened and it would have been a complete non event. But because it seems to have missed all the strong parts and instead gone through a path of least resistance.
Putting it in front of the crash structure is also the wrong thing to do since the wall has to be permanent, i.e. not designed to crumple away.
Tim
Point being that a long thin straight object is always going to have the advantage, even if the object it collides with is harder or heavier. You'd need to make every part of the car stronger than every other part.....errrr!!!
Even then, I doubt you'd stop every case. After all, who would have believed the shocking results to Kubica's car if they had not seen the photos for themselves.