Shunt Anchors

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PlatinumZealot
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Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 03:45

Shunt Anchors

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I am proposing "shunt anchors"

Wheel speed sensors detect when the car is sliding accross the gravel or tarmack.

Anchors beneath the floor are dropped to decelerate the car.

Anchors can be simple titanium claws, or shovels that dig into the earth Or rubber pads that deploy like landing gear.

This device could have slowed Max before his car collided into the wall.
Last edited by PlatinumZealot on 21 Jul 2021, 01:15, edited 1 time in total.
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Just_a_fan
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Joined: 31 Jan 2010, 20:37

Re: Shunt Anchors

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These anchors. They're presumably sprung loaded so as to give immediate response. And they're released by some very fast acting device like an explosive squib? Activation needs to happen in perhaps 0.1s.

A car skidding across the surface fires some spring powered devices downwards against the ground to try to slow the car. What would Newton's Third Law have to say about that?

How strong would these devices need to be to apply sufficient braking force on the car without themselves breaking? And thus how much weight would be involved?

What decides when the devices should be deployed? What metrics will be used? Yaw? Roll? Pitch? GPS?

Seems like a simpler solution would be to just add a layer of Tecpro to the barriers.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.

Jolle
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Joined: 29 Jan 2014, 22:58
Location: Dordrecht

Re: Shunt Anchors

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Verstappen walked away all by himself from the biggest crash you can have in that corner, when the gravel trap didn't do much, at full speed, having a side impact.

I think everything worked like it should.

Just_a_fan
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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Jolle wrote: ↑
21 Jul 2021, 00:28
Verstappen walked away all by himself from the biggest crash you can have in that corner, when the gravel trap didn't do much, at full speed, having a side impact.

I think everything worked like it should.
Exactly. And that was in to old fashioned tyre barrier. Had the tecpro extended further along, I bet he probably wouldn't have had to have his additional check up in hospital either.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.

PhillipM
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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We've got rubber pads, there's one on each corner.

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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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Just_a_fan wrote: ↑
21 Jul 2021, 00:25
These anchors. They're presumably sprung loaded so as to give immediate response. And they're released by some very fast acting device like an explosive squib? Activation needs to happen in perhaps 0.1s.

A car skidding across the surface fires some spring powered devices downwards against the ground to try to slow the car. What would Newton's Third Law have to say about that?

How strong would these devices need to be to apply sufficient braking force on the car without themselves breaking? And thus how much weight would be involved?

What decides when the devices should be deployed? What metrics will be used? Yaw? Roll? Pitch? GPS?

Seems like a simpler solution would be to just add a layer of Tecpro to the barriers.
Yes but once deployed it has to be a low upward force on the car or else the car can be launched into the year.

The Wheel speed sensors should be enough to detect a high speed slide. At least just before the slide.
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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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PhillipM wrote: ↑
21 Jul 2021, 01:00
We've got rubber pads, there's one on each corner.
They have less grip than cleets.

Think of a digger bucket. Or a tractor tyre. This is the amount of traction I'm thinking of.
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PhillipM
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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Tractor tyres have terrible traction. Like 1/5th of a race slick. :wtf:

Cleats are to develop traction by driving wedges of soft mud against the soil below, they're not gonna help on spinning racecar skipping over runoff concrete and gravel.

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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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So the anchors would be perfect for something like this.

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Jolle
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑
21 Jul 2021, 01:54
So the anchors would be perfect for something like this.

https://youtu.be/x45fLUTHCuk
If you look carefully, Alonso’s car flipped when the underside grabbed the gravel. Just imagine if there was even more grip…. Not just one roll, but a multiple.

PhillipM
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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They wouldn't do anything?
The wheel is off the car, it's already sliding along on some titanium skid blocks, and the car digs in and turns over so what do the 'anchors' do?

I really can't see what you're driving at here. The best thing to stop the car is the brakes and enormously sticky tyres on the car. Maybe a parachute for high speeds if you could deploy it fast enough.
Taking load off the sticky tyres with anything else just reduces your braking?

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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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Jolle wrote: ↑
21 Jul 2021, 01:58
PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑
21 Jul 2021, 01:54
So the anchors would be perfect for something like this.

https://youtu.be/x45fLUTHCuk
If you look carefully, Alonso’s car flipped when the underside grabbed the gravel. Just imagine if there was even more grip…. Not just one roll, but a multiple.
Sensors. And programming can predict that easily.
These would be vectored.
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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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Jolle wrote: ↑
21 Jul 2021, 01:58
PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑
21 Jul 2021, 01:54
So the anchors would be perfect for something like this.

https://youtu.be/x45fLUTHCuk
If you look carefully, Alonso’s car flipped when the underside grabbed the gravel. Just imagine if there was even more grip…. Not just one roll, but a multiple.
Good observation. That will be prevented.

You drop the anchors at the back not the front.

Weight shifts forward during these massive slides. You want to drop the anchors at the trailing end of the car.

Think of your self sliding down a hill. Your bain calculates and tells you which arm or leg to stick out and where to place it. Slick tyres don't help much... U have to grab something right. Traction.
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Jolle
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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I like the thought process but… good safety measures on the car are usually passive. Active systems tent to not work so well in a racing environment.
Besides that, cars crashing off the circuit is more or less under control. HANS, halo, crash structures and fuel bladders are doing their job so well that in racing on a track there hasn’t been a real serious accident.

The next rear focus in racing should be car to car impact where one is (almost) stationary and the other one at high speed. In both car and motorcycle racing, that is where the serious accidents are happening.

For this, think of a system like NASCAR has to prevent cars flipping, with their passive flaps. It ticks the boxes a safety device on the car has to have: passive (no sensors or power), light (just a few strips of aluminium) and for an actual dangerous problem.

Just_a_fan
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Re: Shunt Anchors

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For high speed stuff, a parachute would take a lot of energy out but it would need to be ejected extremely quickly - as soon as the system thought there was loss of control - and it would need to be placed so that it didn't just wrap around a spinning / rolling car. It would add weight just like every other system.

The central tenet of crash protection is acceleration limitation. You want to slow the driver as gently as possible i.e. reduce acceleration felt by the driver's internal organs. You do that by taking a long time, relatively, to stop the car.

That's what gravel does well in many cases, and deformable barriers do in other cases. It is important that any system prevents the addition of acceleration to the driver - be that rotational or rebound. We have seen some simple crashes become more severe because the car starts to roll, to spin quickly or be rebounded. Gravel isn't great for some situations because it can induce a roll.

Systems such as tecpro are very good at dealing with most impacts, and certainly those that are near normal to the barrier's surface.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.