Flexible wings controversy 2010

[aral]

Whateer is happening, the wings comply with the rules, and have been tested by FIA, so surely it is better to be praising Newey, for finding a new way to extract more speed from his cars. We all want innovation, but when it arrives, there are many who criticise it.

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I wouldn't call this particular area 'innovation', i'd rather put it down to interpretation and 'flexing' the rules. After watching onboard of redbull and mclaren i can clearly see the ends of the wing on the red bull moving up and down considerabely while the Mclaren doesn't move at all.

They are obviously flexing beyond the limit but under the FIA test they have found a way to be in the limit. 500N load is not a lot, didn't someone mention there is 8000N of load during a race?

I dont know the loading during a race, but if it is as you say, then that confirms what i said. The main point is that the wings are LEGAL, within the parameters set by FIA. And they will remain legal until there is a rule change. Just like the F-duct, it is up to the other teams to catch up. Ferrari have done so already.

[kalinka]

I think the purpose of that black box on the nosecone in testing was for measuring forces. It's visible that the cables are stiff with wing in horizontal position. With a little force-measuring device in that box, they can draw a graficon of the force that pulls the cable versus speed. From that data they can design a wing that's just stiff enough to have some effect on aero, but passes FIA verifications.

EDIT : In the beginnig if I remember correclty, when the flexing rear wing was introduced, that wings indeed passed the FIA tests. Only after some teams complaining, the test procedure has changed so that these new flexi rear wings can't pass the test. I'm not sure now which year was it. Maybe 2002-2003?

[RacingManiac]

Question to you guys out there, because at the time I had exiled myself from the sport due to the same old same old.

Are these flexible floors not in the same precident as the flexi floor used by Ferrari a few years back? I mean to say that the floor IIRC was not unlawful, but against the spirit of safety? It this not the same thing?

to say so, one should prove that they are flexible. FIA tests so far show that they are not. You cannot judge from couple of pictures. If FIA tests with realistic DF levels then it would be a different story. But again, they should re-write the regulations.

I don't think there is question regarding IF the wings(or the floors) are flexible. They are, but they also pass the mandated test. The 2 facts are not mutually exclusive. The way with composite material and how much money is put into their research is that they can be made to have specific properties under specific loading, unlike homogenize material like metal. So I don't think it is entirely far fetch for someone to make a wing to pass the specific test(since the procedure is written for all to obey), while in "real-life" condition it may well deform differently because of other loading circumstances....

At the end of the day though if it passes the mandated tests, it is legal. Spirit of the rules be damned...at which point it is up to the competitors to catch up, and rule maker to figureout how to regulate that, if thats indeed what they want to govern, since the written rule can no longer satisfy the intent(aka, the spirit)...

[delsando]

What if they had flexible material impregnated in the base of the front wing itself, and when testing/ scrutineer comes, the flexible material somehow becomes rigid as simple as by tightening a bolt or something a bit complicated with auto lock mechanism by detaching the nose cone.





So for example the flexible material might be a with high elastic properties, along the inside structure, in essence means that there should also be a non-visible joint (superficial single layer carbon fibre to cover it up) somewhere along the structure for the material to flex.



This theory is similar to the elastic string toy that move when pressed or pulled.

[marcush.]

i think it is as easy as :
where is the load applied ? put your hinge point where the load is apllied and you will not have any bending no matter how big the load until the whole thing bursts...

[forty-two]

I wonder if Vettel's failure during practice at Silverstone was somehow related to his tendency to ride the kerbs?

What I mean is that Vettel tends to hop over the kerbs quite a lot, so perhaps when fitted with a new wing which flexed more than the previous one, his wingtips were grounding on the kerbs, causing increased load on the anchor points?

If this were true, and the team told him to avoid running over the kerbs too much, this might also explain his poorer than usual performance during the race itself.

[forty-two]

What event/s are those images from? Maybe it's just me but that doesn't look like Vettel's helmut from this last weekend ..

These pictures are from Shanghai. If their wing flexed that much back then, I wonder how much it is now able to flex?

EDIT: Typo on word in bold

[forty-two]

Do you people remember when Red Bull tested this back in December?
Clearly they're testing something here in regards to the front wing flexing.

In the above image, all four cables appear to be very taut, which would suggest that the wing is indeed flexing under loading(provided they hadn't deliberately tightened them!).

In both of the above images, there APPEARS to be a considerable amount of slack in at least some of the cables. Again, we don't know whether this is due to the wing NOT being under load and thus not flexing OR if this is due to the engineers having loosened the cables.

But interestingly, in this image, The car is clearly travelling at some speed (>0 MPH at least) but the cables to the wing on the inside of the corner are slack, while the ones to the wing on the outside of the corner are taut.

I'm not sure that I can explain why this might be, but a suggestion would be that as the car experiences a degree of roll when cornering, this causes the wing on the outside of the corner to get nearer to the ground, thus increasing the efficiency of that half of the wing, resulting in greater loading, which in-turn results in increased bending of that wing. Perhaps this was what they were trying to tune with this test rig?? Does this sound logical?

[marcush.]

or the wing is moving sideways under g-forces bending the wingstays????

[mx_tifoso]

The TWO flexi wing threads were merged together, and I brought like 3 pages worth of posts from the RB6 thread.

[WhiteBlue]

I wonder if Vettel's failure during practice at Silverstone was somehow related to his tendency to ride the kerbs?

What I mean is that Vettel tends to hop over the kerbs quite a lot, so perhaps when fitted with a new wing which flexed more than the previous one, his wingtips were grounding on the kerbs, causing increased load on the anchor points?

If this were true, and the team told him to avoid running over the kerbs too much, this might also explain his poorer than usual performance during the race itself.

I think this whole kerb riding story is rubbish in the first place. Cars have to be designed strong enough for the rigors of racing. The nose box in Silverstone was exposed to some extremely vicious inertial forces when Vettel took it over the bumpy new Abbey section many more times than Webber did. That is the most logical explanation for the failure.

[WhiteBlue]

Re the wing with string pics. Horner said at the time of the Silverstone controversy that the wing was primarily helping with aggressive turn in. This seems to be confirmed by the asymmetric deformation of the flexi wing. The question is still, how do they do that.

Perhaps they have the lateral acceleration work on some very weak links between the nose cone and the pillard and the wing and the pillars. This rhomboid link would shift the wing to the outside of the corner and provide asymmetric downforce.

[tok-tokkie]

I seem to remember pictures & discussion earlier in the season where the Red Bull wing was sagging under load to drag on the track at the tips.

[Richard]

mx_tifosi - Thanks for tidy up =D>

So, the current scenario is that the FIA say the wings are legal. That infers the testing regime will stay the same. So other teams will experiment with flexible end zones.

So if this generates front downforce then it will help balance rear downforce generated by the DDD. That opens up new possibilities at the rear

The other interesting feature is that this is variable with speed. Assuming the best effect is with the wing as low as possible, then you'd want it to droop at with relatively low speed. Then stop dropping so it doesn't hit the ground at higher speed.

[RacingManiac]

Would this also be the "anti-f-duct/stalling slot gap" design though, since I assume the wing makes more downforce as it droops lower and also makes more drag. And most likely it will be drooping the most on a straight, where downforce is really not that necessary?

Although it would certainly accounts for the apparent superiority of the RBR in the really fast corners we've seen this year...

I don't think though the airspeed is that different in the mid corner inside and outside of the corner? Even if they very by a few MPH the level of actual force difference shouldn't cause it to deflect significantly more or less....I'd buy the explanation of the wing mount is flexing sideway though....