Heatresistant materials in F1 overalls (Carboranes)

Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
User avatar
Undead_Mud
0
Joined: 11 Mar 2011, 06:38
Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Heatresistant materials in F1 overalls (Carboranes)

Post

Usually I can't really contribute any technical knowledge to the community, as I'm not an engineer, but in today's lecture the professor talked about boranes and gave spacesuits and F1-suits as an example, where one specific carborane molecule is in use (B10C2H12). I thought this might be interesting =).
There is an image of [B12H12]2-
down in the post,which looks similar to B10C2H12.
Two of the borons are exchanged for carbon compared to the image making the carborane neutral.
The terminal B-H/C-H bonds are normal covalent 2-electron bonds, whereas the B-B/C-B bonds in the icosaedron are Three-center-two-electron-bonds. Quite a cool structure!
It is apparently pretty stable and therefore heat resistant and inflammable. I think he talked about 750°C.
The resulting material would also be really lightweight. These properties make a usage in F1 overalls credible for me, but I don't know whether it is true. I'm in my first year, so maybe someone with more chemical knowledge can comment on the possible usage...

Does anyone know, if materials like this are really used in F1 overalls? What (else) is used there? Are the overalls standardized by the FIA and handed to the teams by one supplier?

Cheers
Undead_Mud


Image