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It could also be a vibration dampener... could be that the odd angle of the driveshafts is giving them some harmonic issues?

Thanks guys thats a great help. Ok so the Thompson coupling weighs more but less friction means less wear and less reliability problems so less material needed and less weight. So it might not be that much worse. Also it could allow lower placement of the diff (if thats allowed) and the weight is less of an issue then and the cars are more rear biased in weight this year anyway.

Any thoughts...

majicmeow wrote:It could also be a vibration dampener... could be that the odd angle of the driveshafts is giving them some harmonic issues?

That's a good point.. =D>

But are the Williams in real trouble with their driveshafts? I don't remember any retirement because of this issue so I think they are doing fine and what we saw was just a sensor used in practice to verify something.

MIKEY_! wrote:Thanks guys thats a great help. Ok so the Thompson coupling weighs more but less friction means less wear and less reliability problems so less material needed and less weight. So it might not be that much worse. Also it could allow lower placement of the diff (if thats allowed) and the weight is less of an issue then and the cars are more rear biased in weight this year anyway.

Any thoughts...

Also, I beleive the thompson coupling cannot support plunge which is required when you have suspension travel.

I doubt the vibration damper idea. Such a device would need to operate over the full length of the shaft.

Tim

Tim.Wright wrote: I doubt the vibration damper idea. Such a device would need to operate over the full length of the shaft.

Tim

Nah, you can use harmonic dampers at specific points on a driveshaft, plenty of FWD production cars these days use a rubber/silicone filled version on the longer shaft as it's cheaper than an offset support and equal length shafts.


I don't think it is though, just a sensor.

What would it sense? I think they know about how much torque is being applied,,,so I doubt that one.

They might know the torque being applied, but that does not equal the torque in the driveshafts. I doubt they are interested in the magnitude of the torque at all. More interesting for them would be the torque fluctuations.

If they have made some subtle changes to the geometry of the bearing surfaces or location of the joints there would be resulting changes in the torques fluctucations which they would be interested in measuring.

Tim

strad wrote:What would it sense? I think they know about how much torque is being applied...

...from one end.

Unless they've mapped every racetrack to 0.1mm and got the grip levels for every piece accurate to a percent or so, and then simulated every single line, throttle position, driveshaft angle/rotation and car attitude a driver could take without crashing, including rubbing wheels with competitors and/or airborne moments.

Otherwise, no, they don't, they can make a reasonable guess and then stick some sensors on to check

Could it be for measuring the bending in the shafts because of their tendency to straiten.
They could use this to work out the effect this has on the suspension and tyre wear.

Would it be possible to have rigid joints as well on the half-shafts. One at the diff and one on the wheel thus reducing the angle the CVs have to work at. Also do the teams use rigid joints to get the gearbox/diff lower in the car or has this been banned.

An interesting detail is if we are talking true CV-joints (constant velocity) here or the simplier U-joint, which was the case in the past in Formula One, when I was young and handsome?

Anyway, in case of a U-joint, the torque on the half-shaft is not xactly the same as the torque at the diff or wheel.
This is due to the nature of the U-joint, where the angular velocity at the driven side will sway as a wave according to;

w2 = w1 * cosphi/(1-sin^2phi * cos^2w1t)

With two phazed U-joints however, as in this case, said waves take out eachothers, resulting in a constant speed at the wheel.

Power is torque times speed, constant torque in, will become a varying torque on the half-shaft, then constant again at the wheel.

Been through this...

Really, plese don't hesitate to share?

Not me but earlier in this forum.