It has been proposed that they are strain gages, but what form of strain are they measuring? There does not seem to be any external cabling. A strain gage strip would not need to be this bulky and could be built into the fabrication.
My guess would be that there are load cells inside.
If you want to know the load in a beam, strain gauges are good for simple loadcases and isotropic materials. If you know the strain, you can calculate the load.
On a carbon wishbone however, I think this would be a nightmare. The material is ansiotropic, and the load case is a conbination of tension, comperssion and some bending. So knowing the strain on the surface is not going to help you calculate an accurate value for the load.
Looks like what they have done here is cut the wishbone, installed a custom loadcell which is bonded into the wishbon section, and the covered over it with a fairing. The wires would run inside the arm like the brake lines, sensor wires and wheel tethers.
Notice there isnt on on the pushrod. Teams commonly use strain gauges on these because the have metallic ends with simple cross sections and the part is a tension compression only link. Therefore its very easy to calibrate the strain reading to a load.
Why are the covers span-wise, rather than stream-wise?
Why are there no obvious inboard boots covering flexures?
Why does each link have them located at different span-wise positions (apparently)?
Why are the covers span-wise, rather than stream-wise?
Why are there no obvious inboard boots covering flexures?
Why does each link have them located at different span-wise positions (apparently)?
Dave that´s quite intriguing -double hinge suspension sort of ? so some kind of elastokinematics cool cool..
marcush. wrote:that´s quite intriguing -double hinge suspension sort of ? so some kind of elastokinematics cool cool..
That was my thought. I guess it would require a similar arrangement on the right side, though.
I wonder if some clever person would like to pronounce on the possible benefits of such a geometry (bearing in mind that the suspension is likely to be stiff in heave/pitch, but relatively soft in roll).
I fear something like this would prove a bit of a challenge under braking ? But then-with cf you can realise weird behaviour by applying plies in unusual directions...
