While driving home, something struck me. F1 has been doing its best to prevent cars coming loose from the car, with kevler tethers and all that. On the other hand, teams have moved from steel suspension arms to carbon fibre ones, for obvious aerodynamic and weight reasons.
While tethers may have improved safety, does anybody know how or if the carbon fibre wishbones have changed anything to driver safety. So, would there be a reduced risk of Senna like incidents - where a wishbone damaged the helmet in a life threatening way - nowadays?
I feel like the way a car part hit someone in a crash is going to be so impossible to predict... I'd have a hard time conclusively saying one way is better or safer than another.
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Obviously the weight is lower, so I might be better.
I've also seen that usually wishbones stay attached either to the chassis or the upright most of the time, often not being dislocated from either part but instead just break at one point and then stay attached to whichever side it's still connected. Maybe this is the most important change as I presume steel would just bend. Not sure though, just thinking out loud...
I think that if the arm detaches for whatever reason, it is already shattered, thus being able to do very little damage if they even collide with the helmet. The wheels are also connected to tethers which are too short to reach the drivers head(when they stay attached of course)
I´d say there is a lot to materials choice and a wheel or anything else parting company with the car may or may not be an advantage as we have seen recently in webbers pitlane issue ....or some fatal incidents when wheels coming loose struck other competitors or spectators.
Motorsport was and is dangerous and in a nutshell my feeling is everything should remain with the car and be restrained in a way to avoid hitting the head of the driver of the car losing the wheel .
Everything else is just too much of a speculation .
So a tether going from one upright to the other is not a good idea maybe and having the rearward suspension link tethered is also something you need to think long and hard about .But generally I think it is a good idea to have a rope of dyneema fed through parts like wishbones and attached ,secured in a solid ways to the main chassis /engine /gearbox .So even in a case of totally smashed up components the whole lot stays attached to the car and is robbed of degrees of freedom very quickly .
CF and steel tubings have massive potential to pierce through whatever material given the energy involved.
Last edited by marcush. on 16 Sep 2013, 10:21, edited 1 time in total.
A few years back when Indy Car rules still mandated steel suspension parts, there was also a requirement for a tube/rod connecting the inboard ends of the front A-arms. The purpose of this piece was to prevent the inboard end of the A-arm from penetrating the side of the tub during an impact with the wall.
The wheel tethers are intended to protect drivers as well as spectators. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't.
Ithink the rotating wheel ,when it is separated from the car is the biggest issue with potential to hurt spectators .So say A:suspension must not deta´ch from the car should be instantly followed up by B:Wheels must not separate from the Upright under all conditions-apart from a wheel change.
Carbon fibre tubes I have seen fail (such as a sail mast and bike frames..Both very LOUDLY) they tended not to shatter into shards like carbon panels during an impact but they more collapsed with the CF and Kevlar retaining some connection through the fibres. They more simply lost their rigidity as the epoxy etc failed however remain "attached" end to end.
Some of the pictures of the F1 wishbones seemed to fail in a similar fashion, not to a fracture point but to a loss of rigidity as the binder fractured. Is this the norm for these parts and the way they are designed?
If they did, in doing so, they would loose mass from the binder dissipating and loose stiffness meaning they would be less of a hazard should they come loose. A loosely held bundle of carbon/kevlar fibres would be much safer than a metal fragment in terms of potential damage.
A metal wishbone would tend to react in an opposite manner (like the rear aluminum swing arm of a motorbike. Yes mine broke while I was riding it) and retain most of its mass as it crushes / collapses along predetermined zones providing more energy to dissipate in an impact.
Where a metal piece does retain enough of its shape or is sheared/fractured to a sharp edge, with a higher mass and retained rigidity, it would more effectively be able to pierce the tub or become a high velocity, higher mass sharp metal missile.
As for the wheels, hubs, brakes etc the tethers seem to be doing a very good job keeping them out of the drivers safety cell by limiting the amount of travel they have, so having something pierce the tub would seem a bigger issue
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