747heavy wrote:Hi Marcus,
Sorry I dunno - it´s not really my field, but I understand what you want to say.
The way I read the article (just quickly) I think, they talk about tempered in tems of material thickness not so much about cross section area.
Teams could still vary the wall thickness/lay-up of there pushrods without affecting the appearance/look of the component - IMO
I never used, or have seen a composite pushrod in detail, so can´t really comment on it. But even a (some) DTM cars did not used (steel) pushrods with various diameter.
Only very slight variantion towards the ends, maybe that has changed in the last six years, don´t know. I left the series in 2004.
for the metal type pushrods this is even more striking ,isn´t it? I have seen metal fabricated pushrods with stiffening ribs(stringers)welded iside them (at least I assume they have as you can see the rosebud weld on the surface along the elngth..).
In one of the Gary Savage pieces I found in the web he clearly mentions constant
section push rod with bonded in endpieces from titanium..so I do not even understand why they would not increase material thickness in the bond areatransforming to the tube section...and to improve on buckling resistance the material thickness needed in the centre would be silly if you can easily do that with cross section (form is much more efficient than increase material properties in my book)..and plus you don´t want elasticity coming from a pushrod do you?even if this may give you a bit of security in ultimate failure mode in severe overload conditions (coil bind/hitting suspension stops hard -eg severe overload conditions.)
