Tire Heat

[strad]

For any that didn't get or would like to save the thermal imaging of the front tires this weekend.
Note how cool the tires are on the warm up lap to the grid.
click photo for video

[Kiril Varbanov]

I loved the replay of Di Resta's crash (not the crash itself) - the amount of temp changing in 500ms was amazing.

On the downside, it took them ages to come up with something like this.
On the upside, this is a good sign for more hi-tech stuff being shown|allowed. It is still my hope that FOM will start releasing some in-race data, whatever that is, so that fans can start storing data and then to build models - for statistical or analytical purposes, or for whatever is allowed.

[Cold Fussion]

The images are cool, though I wish they put the temperature scale up.

[mclaren777]

I made an animated GIF to highlight the effect of tire lockup...

[marcush.]

I think these pictures clearly indicate how complicated and tradeoff based this exercise is .very rarely the two fronts have the same heat image ....so given the grip is temperature sensitive the available grip changes quite a lot over time and load
As the driver cannot see the temps he must rely on his feel or anticipation to judge the available roadholding ...interestingly the ir imaging starts rather suddenly displaying color at all ...maybe the team chose to reduce the band of wavelength displayed to get more detail/discrete temperture levels -id be less interested in the absolute numbers but more so in how much of a temperature change is from blue purple yellow red ...the range displayed would be interesting.
Given there is some indication in them cooling ducts -radiator core temps showed you can maybe correlate the color a bit....
IF only the radiator was black (or grey) and not aluminium color and severely angled backwards....

[mep]

Why is the nose of DiResta's car so shiny and reflects even the cold surfaces of the ripped of tire?
I highly doubt that is purely a thermal image.

[strad]

Are you talking abut the bits of rubber and in one case a couple of drops of water? They are black because they are so cool by comparison.

[hollus]

Deleted, as the first version was actually wrong.
If you notice the reflections of the cold tire surfaces, they have become even colder. The "black rims" reflect now as gray, the colored thread reflects as black, which makes sense as IR intensity would be lost in a less than perfect reflection. I think it is a thermal image, with a very intensive digital color filtering.

[strad]

Ah I understand...mis read the first time...

[Tim.Wright]

I'm quite sure the image is heavily processed to the point of it being nothing but some pretty pictures.

No team (or Pirelli for that matter) would agree to have thermal imaging of their tyres in the public domain. In fact, I'd say (speculate if you will) that its a given that the colour calibration on each car is different just to make sure you can't do any meaningful comparisons.

In other words I wouldn't bother drawing any conclusions from what you see here.

[marcush.]

Deleted, as the first version was actually wrong.
If you notice the reflections of the cold tire surfaces, they have become even colder. The "black rims" reflect now as gray, the colored thread reflects as black, which makes sense as IR intensity would be lost in a less than perfect reflection. I think it is a thermal image, with a very intensive digital color filtering.

a thermal image is always processed -the colors we see are anything you like them to be and in essence are there to discretise the different temp steps as a ir picture is a shades of grey affair.
the imaging sensor is mapped pixel for pixel and a the captured data is processed so as to assign colours to the different wavelengths captured by the sensor .
One would differentiate radiometry (each viewed point is exactly measured -you get a temperature reading) and on the other side of the spectrum you get IR viewing which only shows hotter or colder by the shade of grey you have captured .You need reference probes in your field of view to be able to assign a exact temperature to those shades of grey ..

[SiLo]

Notice the difference in temperature between the two cars in front around the engine bays. One is much cooler than the other.

[strad]

In other words I wouldn't bother drawing any conclusions from what you see here.

I wouldn't go that far. We have no idea the actual temps, but we can draw some conclusions.

[marcush.]

you can obviously assign a temperature gradient to the colours -as we have the time how quickly the color changes.Rubber has a certain latency to change temps so a rise in temp will take some time ,a quick change in color as we have seen is an indicator of a very narrow temperature band displayed in these shots.

[Steven]

Maybe a strange question, but does the steering angle influence the accuracy of the temperature readings on the front wheels? There are some obvious changes during steering, but I was wondering if part is due to the camera (to prevent wrong conclusions).