Came across this system on the D-Sports forum. Anyone used them? Looks kind of neat, they mention being developed as an alternative to elastomer bump rubbers in NASCAR.
The carbon fibre pattern seems rather arbitrary for this very specific type of load and expected elasticity (I would at least expect it to be of radial symmetry, but they could have multiple layers of fibres).
As nowadays any serious prototype race series (single seater formulas, LMP) uses torsion bars it begs the question whether someone is developing composite torsion bars (could be made with more custom dependence of spring rate on displacement).
Oversized Bellevilles, perhaps. I heard about them sometime ago, but have yet to see any in action.
Interesting concept, with the attractions noted by Hyperco in their product presentation (in particular, bending moments introduced by high stiffness coil-overs can create serious damper performance and reliability issues).
They do appear to offer fairly limited stroke, but that might not be a problem in some applications (F1 front 3rds, for example). I am not sure about NASCAR, the last time I looked they didn't run coil-overs, and the damper attachment points would have needed some serious work.
I could imagine that delamination might be issue at the points of contact, but Hyperco might have helped that with the separators at the inner edges.
superdread wrote:The carbon fibre pattern seems rather arbitrary for this very specific type of load and expected elasticity (I would at least expect it to be of radial symmetry, but they could have multiple layers of fibres).
As nowadays any serious prototype race series (single seater formulas, LMP) uses torsion bars it begs the question whether someone is developing composite torsion bars (could be made with more custom dependence of spring rate on displacement).
Still, could be good for non-prototype racing.
Why try to just take a different material ? The logic is flawed.A bending carbon beam is a very feasible solution and is already in production c-spring carbon fibre.
the weight advanatge tells me it´s already in use.
marcush. wrote:
Why try to just take a different material ? The logic is flawed.A bending carbon beam is a very feasible solution and is already in production c-spring carbon fibre.
the weight advanatge tells me it´s already in use.
There are very good reasons for torsion bar suspension, for one, they are very small -> good packaging. This C-Spring looks very cumbersome and it would have to be installed in parallel to the push-/pullrod system as dampening and antiroll can't be handled by it.
The website of Sardou Sa tells a different story: the only mention is that their c-spring was road tested, the last activity was in 2007, no reference to end-user application...
