Halo, how does it work

[saturn13]

I keep reading the Halo is for deflecting debris. It's not. It is to protect the drivers head if they run under a recovery tractor. Also to keep a car from sliding along the body and hit a driver, a lot of close calls there. Alonso has had several close calls with other cars sliding over him. For debris they will have to install thick clear plastic in front. It will stop loose wheels, but not springs like Massa ran into.

[j2004p]

I keep reading the Halo is for deflecting debris. It's not. It is to protect the drivers head if they run under a recovery tractor. Also to keep a car from sliding along the body and hit a driver, a lot of close calls there. Alonso has had several close calls with other cars sliding over him. For debris they will have to install thick clear plastic in front. It will stop loose wheels, but not springs like Massa ran into.

I think they've tried to make out like stopping debris is ONE of the intended uses of the Halo but as you say it's only going to stop large pieces of debris and depending on strength a car riding up over the chassis.

It wouldn't necessarily even prevent large objects hitting the top of the drivers head such as Justin Wilson or Henry Surtis.

However I'd love to see a crash test with something along the lines of what happened to Alonso at Spa a few years ago and see how the Halo will absorb or deflect that much lateral impact force. The way I see it there would be two outcomes.

1. The Halo cannot absorb that much force and will break away from the chassis rendering it useless and even worse compound the problem.
2. The Halo can absorb the force but in some way strips bodywork or parts off the incoming car below the upper arm of 'the wishbone' which then ingress into the cockpit (again not really helping).

The Halo to me seems to have as many potential problems as it solves.

[jjn9128]

Gosh I suggest reading at least SOME of the press articles or other topics about the halo! The halo is not intended to have anything to do with impacting recovery vehicles, head protection was being tested years before Bianchi's accident - a forward roll hoop was suggested in 2012 for use in 2013!!!

The three criteria they tested were car-to-car, car-to-object, and debris-to-car. Debris includes small and large items, but particularly nose boxes and wheels as those have caused high profile fatalities. Car to object is head on collisions where cars are buried in the barriers, e.g. Kovalainen (who received a concussion in Spain '08) and Sainz in Russia, or like Viso's crach in GP2 when he rolled over a wall in 2007. Car-to-car includes incidents like Wurz-Coulthard, Schumacher-Liuzzi, Alonso-Grosjean, and Raikkonen-Alonso. They used historical data and tweaked the conditions of the crashes to simulate hundreds, maybe thousands, of different scenarios! The also chucked millions of small items at the car, showing the driver was 17% less likely to be hit by something like a spring - even though that wasn't a design consideration.

The halo is capable of withstanding enormous loads, so much so the crash tests mean a significant improvement to the chassis strength - so the halo deforms before the chassis breaks. I forget the load it has to withstand, but it's something like 16x the static weight of the car - crash test loads like this are unprecedented in F1!!

[saturn13]

I read the Halo stories, I just can't remember all of them. I recently somwhere saw the forces that are allowed in all directions for the Halo. It reminds me of the cage that Top Fuel dragsters have. 17% sounds about right for that little post in front to deflect. I guess the bridging between roll over structure and body might have protected Alonso. I hope they go to a full canopy some day.

[Xwang]

A top fuel drugster cage would be less ugly than halo and more crash proven.

[FrukostScones]

Its purpose is to kill F1. Seems like FIA and Liberty teamed up to finish the task swiftly.

[cooken]

I read the Halo stories, I just can't remember all of them. I recently somwhere saw the forces that are allowed in all directions for the Halo. It reminds me of the cage that Top Fuel dragsters have. 17% sounds about right for that little post in front to deflect. I guess the bridging between roll over structure and body might have protected Alonso. I hope they go to a full canopy some day.

Sooooo you started an obviously inflammatory thread based on stuff you can't remember? This subject had been covered to death, so there's no reason to stir it up again with blatant misinformation. Do a search on the forum or internet in general. See the thread below for example, one of many filled with such diatribe already.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26591&hilit=Halo

Edit: Here's a direct link to the FIA briefing.
https://youtu.be/AYkGjUHstKY