Flexible wings controversy 2010

[DaveW]

Nothing wierd. Its just a trick of the light. Look at the markings on the nose, the bull, the roundel with the number, the base of the antennae, the LG logo. They are all static. Still. Not moving.

... &, on the other side of the nose, the camera housing.... The shift in field of view of the nose camera with airspeed would be a little too obvious, I think.

[myurr]

The Rules also specify that diffusers should look like this:

And clearly they dont atm!

Don't get me wrong, I've always been against the double diffusers as against the spirit of the rules. The difference here is that the teams are using a loophole in the rules, that the FIA themselves approved, rather than a loophole in the test procedures. In my view that is not a subtle distinction.

[segedunum]

Nothing wierd. Its just a trick of the light. Look at the markings on the nose, the bull, the roundel with the number, the base of the antennae, the LG logo. They are all static. Still. Not moving.

No, that's not what I'm looking at. Look right at the end of the nose. There is something happening.

[marcush.]

the camera housing movement would be something very obvioius have we seen any onboards with rB wing camera perspective?

[segedunum]

It would, but we'd have to see it on board. No external shot is going to do because of the movement and we have nothing relative to compare it to.

In addition, I think we'd have to compare the same type of on board shot to a 'static' McLaren, if indeed it is static, to be reasonably sure there is something different going on.

[marcush.]

thinkin again it would be quite difficult to detect... as no reference towards immobile parts of the car is there...so how would you decifer wing movement from atitude of the car or ride height movements...It would only be ovious if the camera was looking backwars towrds the splitter... I think Neweay would turm red like a tomato if that was specified...

[Richard]

Sorry about low res. Hamilton @ Hockenheim comparing stationary at start to flat out on straight



http://video.fc2.com/content/F1%202010% ... 7xq3w6M63/

[wesley123]

so you styate that wing is flexing? As an fact it is allowed to felx 1CM with an 50KG load, that thing isnt flexing that much beyond the 10mm

[segedunum]

The wing of that McLaren certainly looks a hell of a lot more uniform anyway, and there is no bending down at the tips. There appears to be some more movement in the nose of the Red Bull, and logically there has to be, but there's nothing conclusive you can draw because you'd need to know what context the car was in and what forces were acting on it i.e. braking. I certainly can't see any pivot points or anything mechanical that would lower the nose from anything I've seen. Vettel's nose failure at Silverstone didn't give us anything either and that's probably as close as we might get.

I would imagine the teams that want to recreate this, and want to take a shortcut, are going to have to have internal and external video and single frames of the car synchronised time-wise with each other and they're going to have to compare and analyse them very closely so they can get an idea of where to look. They might well have already done it and have been doing it for weeks. The result of those investigations might now have culminated in the complaints. If they've only picked up on this as a result of a picture from a random photographer then they're total. The pictures have given us some food for thought but I doubt any of us can go that far with the material available.

[myurr]

so you styate that wing is flexing? As an fact it is allowed to felx 1CM with an 50KG load, that thing isnt flexing that much beyond the 10mm

Not only that but comparing the start vs the end of the straight is giving the absolute maximum that wing is flexing. The Red Bull in it's equivalent image is flexing far more and that is a comparison between two different speeds, rather than one of the images being at rest.

[godlameroso]

This isn't really about if one team is cheating or not, the rules specifically allow for a certain amount of flex, if one team can take advantage of the rules, it doesn't require the rules to be remade. The only way it would is if it was safety related, and in this case it isn't. If it was safety related we would have seen more front wing failures this year on the cars in question.

I wonder if the front wings were narrower if end-plate technology would have advanced as far as it has in the last year.

[747heavy]

if more and more teams start to go down this route, and try to outdo each other we may just see a wing failure soon.
IMHO this is one of the reasons the FIA steps in now, before things start to go out of hand.
Have a look at some photos of the Sauber in Hungary for example, to me it looks like their FW flexes as well.

I´m not too worried if McLaren etc. copy the concept, but when the likes of HRT and Virgin start with it (and I don´t mean it in any disrespect to them), we may see a repeat of the Simtek/Ratzenberger accident from 1994

[djos]

if more and more teams start to go down this route, and try to outdo each other we may just see a wing failure soon.
IMHO this is one of the reasons the FIA steps in now, before things start to go out of hand.
Have a look at some photos of the Sauber in Hungary for example, to me it looks like their FW flexes as well.

I´m not too worried if McLaren etc. copy the concept, but when the likes of HRT and Virgin start with it (and I don´t mean it in any disrespect to them), we may see a repeat of the Simtek/Ratzenberger accidend from 1994

There is only so much flexibility needed to drop the wings 25mm so I dont share your fears of wing failures even from the B Teams - if they can pass the new tests from the FIA then they will be well strong enuf to withstand a bit of high speed flexing.

[marcush.]

to me the risk of breakage is surely higher when things are very stiff yet lightweight...
or what a friend of mine usually said in similar circumstances:
things that bend do not break...oversimplified ,of course but some truth in it still.
I´m not aware of what the teams do in terms of shaker tests (not for setup but for parts validation)but this is really straightforward things to evaluate hard for the real newbies as they do not have the excitation profiles from all tracks but surely every piece has its points of resonance ....of course this is for wings compounded by the fact that aeroloads will alter their resonant frequency ...

[DaveW]

Forgive me people, but wing flexing per se is not a problem, see here. I think the biggest danger occurs when the centre of pressure is ahead of the elastic axis, which can cause divergence above a critical airspeed. This may have happened to an RBR front wing this year.

The phenomenon is not new, see the second paragraph of 1.2 here. It is also seductive, because it can be used (& has been in missiles, for example) to increase the effectiveness of the wing under load.