Composite wishbones

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Jersey Tom
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Re: Composite wishbones

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WhiteBlue wrote:
Jersey Tom wrote:
WhiteBlue wrote:Titanium seems like the proper material for wishbones. Will work many races instead of a having to pass a structural test each race.
How do you figure?
Titanium has the metallic properties which would make it endure multiple races without material fatigue and the cracks that are a problem in carbon fiber. It is more ductile than carbon fiber but has a much lower specific weight than steel. Ten years ago all F1 teams used Titanium unless I'm very mistaken.

The problem with carbon fiber suspension parts is the exposure to impacts. They are very brittle and so any debris that hits a suspension member can cause a damage that you don't see except by fluxing it.

Carbon fiber has the lower mass and thus the higher performance but it is not worth the cost IMO if all teams agree.

On the other side you do have a safety aspect. Metallic suspension parts can be dangerous in accidents as Senna's death and Timo Glock's accident in Suzuka this year showed.
But why Ti over steel? Steel can still be lightweight, stronger than Ti, and with the higher modulus is more resistant to buckling (for a given geometry).
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WhiteBlue
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Re: Composite wishbones

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Titanium will have lower mass than steel at equal design strenght. This is why it is the preferred metal for helicopters and aircraft over steel. In this application it reduces the unsprung mass which pushes performance.

http://www.evertibikes.com/why_titanium.htm

This article discusses Titanium vs Steel vs Aluminum for bike frames. The conclusions are directly applicable to F1 suspension members. Particularly the much superior elongation and ductility makes titanium the material of choise. On the other hand one must take care that tubs are strong enough that suspension members cannot invade into the safety cell.
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DaveW
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Re: Composite wishbones

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WhiteBlue wrote:Titanium will have lower mass than steel at equal design strenght. This is why it is the preferred metal for helicopters and aircraft over steel. In this application it reduces the unsprung mass which pushes performance.

http://www.evertibikes.com/why_titanium.htm

This article discusses Titanium vs Steel vs Aluminum for bike frames. The conclusions are directly applicable to F1 suspension members. Particularly the much superior elongation and ductility makes titanium the material of choise. On the other hand one must take care that tubs are strong enough that suspension members cannot invade into the safety cell.
Forgive me WB, but I think your case might be better made by a reference that wasn't marketing hype (& inaccurate in a number of its claims). So far as I am aware, steel is still the preferred material for competition vehicle suspension links for reasons of cost, stiffness, ease of manufacture, consistency, & robustness.

xpensive
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Re: Composite wishbones

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An interesting comparison for judging stiffness is always modulus over density, when those two parameters are pretty much constant for different variations of each material.

Steel: 2.0E11/7900 = 25.3E6
Titanium: 1.0E11/4500 = 22.2E6
Aluminium: 0.7E11/2700 = 25.9E6
Magnesium: 0.44E11/1740 = 25.3E6

As you can see, not much to chose from between the four, which perhaps leaves Yield strength as the parameter to focus on, where Titanium Gr.5 can go above 800 MPa, out of reach for Aluminium and Magnesium, but no match for steel.

But there are also other arguments. When a suspension-part needs to be thin for aerodynamic reasons and yet resistant to buckling, it is perhaps difficult to utilize the superior strength of steel due to the need for surface-inertia (I), which is not proportional to cross-section area, without making it too heavy?
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marcush.
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Re: Composite wishbones

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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 7243491502#

small video about titanium cold working for bicycle frames ...and some interesting crossreference to carbon fibre.

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WhiteBlue
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Re: Composite wishbones

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xpensive wrote:An interesting comparison for judging stiffness is always modulus over density, when those two parameters are pretty much constant for different variations of each material.
The comparison with aluminum shows why this is not the primary reason for material selection. Titanium has the superior elongation at break which also means ductility and impact resistance are 50% higher than steel and multiples higher than aluminum. Failure in dynamic load environments and under impact situations is greatly reduced which caused F1 teams to use this material. Thirteen years ago a friend of mine in England had a business making these components. They were in great demand then.
DaveW wrote:So far as I am aware, steel is still the preferred material for competition vehicle suspension links for reasons of cost, stiffness, ease of manufacture, consistency, & robustness.
I agree that cost effectiveness is much better with steel but to my knowledge it did not stop the F1 teams to go for Titanium. I recently visited a helicopter manufacturer. They also had almost no steel parts but rows of machines making Titanium parts. One can imagine why this is the case. Another application which influences the material choice is F1 gearboxes. They also are often made from Titanium. At least they were state of the art before some teams started to experiment with carbon fiber composites. There are also sources that confirm my memory that Titanium was first used for wishbones by F1, namely by Colin Chapman and John Barnard.

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/mech330/ticast.htm
2. Applications and Processes
Use of titanium started in the automobile industry in the early 1970s with the use of small machined parts for racing cars, such as gear linkages, where the high costs of materials and manufacture were acceptable. Early attempts at fabricating suspension components by welding at Lotus in the early 1980s were unsuccessful as the appropriate precautions were not taken and parts cracked. By the early 1990s Barnard had devised an effective method of providing an inert atmosphere while welding and fabricated suspension uprights. As the suspension upright is "unsprung weight", weight savings here are particularly worthwhile.
Under the proper inert atmosphere titanium alloys can be cast which isn't done for steel. It is often pre shaped by cold forging or drop forging to improve the eutectic structure and save on milling time and material. Cost of titanium parts manufacture can be reduced by factory recycling the scrap from the milling process.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

xpensive
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Re: Composite wishbones

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You are too fast for me WB, I was coming to elongation vs strength values:

Ti Gr5: 10% Elogation at Yield/Tensile of 830/890 MPa
Ti Gr4: 15% Elogation at Yield/Tensile of 480/550 MPa
Ti Gr3: 20% Elogation at Yield/Tensile of 280/350 MPa

Al 7075-T6: 5-8% Elogation at Yield/Tensile of 460/520 MPa (Typical Aircraft quality)

A normalized High-strength Carbon steel should have 18% Elogation at Yield/Tensile of 400/650 MPa
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xpensive
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Re: Composite wishbones

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Titanium isn't the xotic material it was only 20 years ago, when it's today the preferred material for off-shore piping,
where welding does not seem to be much of a problem anymore, if it ever was.

http://www.offshore-technology.com/cont ... ermascand/

http://www.permascand.com/titaniumbusin ... 00422.html
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Jersey Tom
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Re: Composite wishbones

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Ti is cool, but don't get too excited about its strength and weight.

Grade 5 Ti has a yield strength somewhere around 155 ksi.

300M steel (S155 I think in the UK..) yields around 230 ksi.

Strength to weight ratios aren't too far off.
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WhiteBlue
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Re: Composite wishbones

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xpensive wrote:Titanium isn't the xotic material it was only 20 years ago, when it's today the preferred material for off-shore piping...
Compare corrosion resistance for an explanation.
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DaveW
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Re: Composite wishbones

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I am happy to let metallurgists argue the case for Ti. My peripheral experiences are:

Team Lotus embraced Ti enthusiastically in or around 1980, but threw it away almost immediately after de Angelis had a major off following the disintegration of his fabricated Ti brake pedal.

A little later they experimented with Ti springs, but gave those up because they found it difficult to maintain corner weights & ride height because the springs "crept".

My shaven legged friends like Ti cycle frames, partly because they make a statement, but also because they are allegedly more compliant (hence more comfortable) than steel or Al alloy frames.

Current F1 teams may use Ti suspension links (I don't have that information) but, if they do, they are probably unique. I can't think of another race series, from IRL outwards & downwards where Ti is used for that application. It could even be (shudder) that the potential for greater bending compliance is used by F1 teams to ditch link end fittings (bearings, flexures).

xpensive
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Re: Composite wishbones

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Creep is actually one of the downsides with Ti, besides, stiffness will always be half of steel's for the same structure.

I seem to remember that Clay Regazzoni's career-ending crash in the 1980 Ensign was down to a broken Ti brake-pedal?
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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Composite wishbones

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A lot of modern street cars use aluminum suspension parts. Control arms, hubs, uprights. The engineers have figured that the fatigue life under street conditions is more than adequate.
The drawback is that they are physically larger.

Here is the suspension on the Nissan GTR.
Image

Of course for a race car.. the aluminum would probably not be cast but something like hollow tubes welded to some ends or CNC. The disadvantages are the stiffness, so it buckles easier. warpage after welding etc. so the arms would need to be of more volume than a steel arm.

I was designing some control arms in Solid works for a small project. The steel arm had tubes 3/4" 0.065 steel. The aluminum arm is to be a CNC machined solid piece. The aluminum arm was roughly the same strength in the members and lighter by about 50% (I don't remember exactly but it was lighter by far).
The actual members of the arm were actually strong enough, but there was a problem. The ends of the arm that hold the bearings were failing. The small amount of material that surrounded the bearing was succumbing to stress concentration. The ends of the aluminum arm had to be enlarged as to not fail and so a bigger bearing had to be used to fill up the space. In the end, the total mass of the bearings and aluminum came within about 80% or 90% (memory not too clear)of the steel one and the upright had to be modified for this bigger part. So just to point out: sometimes because of other factors such as stress concentration at places were things are inserted and space constraints, It might be better off to choose strength over strength per density.

Still aluminum is a possible option.
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DaveW
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Re: Composite wishbones

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n smikle wrote:Still aluminum is a possible option.
It would be for a closed wheel race vehicle & it might be more convenient to manufacture machined Al alloy components for that application. But I would expect precautions to be taken to avoid cracks developing, & I doubt that the result would offer a significant weight advantage over a steel equivalent if stiffness was equalized....

marcush.
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Re: Composite wishbones

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DaveW wrote:
n smikle wrote:Still aluminum is a possible option.
It would be for a closed wheel race vehicle & it might be more convenient to manufacture machined Al alloy components for that application. But I would expect precautions to be taken to avoid cracks developing, & I doubt that the result would offer a significant weight advantage over a steel equivalent if stiffness was equalized....
this reflects exactly my experience .aluminium rarely gives any weight advantages if you have equivalent characteristics .
the titanium idea is sure an alley worth considering as you might get away with a smaller part compared to steel but not having the hassle of carbonfibre ..