Scarbs T-Tray proposal

[myurr]

Ok good, and i am now seeing the fasteners which must be visble.

In fact there are 7 fasteners around the the black part and 4 spaced widely at the front.

The is wear pattern is the inverse of this:

The same idea but with the tip pointing down so that the middle part stays clean.

The tip pointing down is opposite to what the see saw is trying to achieve.

What is also intereing here is tha the plank is not weared evenly. It's really just a bunch of streaks, made to look like the whole surface is worn.
I can actually see that the tip has more excessive wear than the other scrubbed parts. I am referring to around the most forward hole. Look how evenly scrubbed it is. The area aft of this hole is in fact quite clean.

So i would say this floor is behaving normally, except for the clean patch in front of the 2 big holes. And this could be purely because of the tolerance in the manufacturing of the plank.

I'm obviously not seeing what you're seeing as there's some very strange wear patterns there. Leading edge wear *could* be from the crash - i.e. going through the gravel taking that paint off. Or it could be normal for this car. Or it could be mud.

What I find really strange is the wear pattern before those two big holes where you have the darker band on the plank. You've got the highest level of wear on the entire plank just in front and behind that dark patch which indicates the lowest wear on the plank. You've also got streaks that run around the outside of that dark patch suggesting that it's not simply deformation of the plank. This dark patch was also on the shots of Webbers car when it flipped at Valencia.

Where exactly on this plank would the samples be taken from? Are we seeing Red Bull using different materials, as they do at the rear, or some kind of protective paint in that section? Why is wear at the front of the plank, up until the dark patch, pretty much uniform which suggests that it is parallel to the track rather than raked?

From those two holes backwards the plank looks effectively unworn showing that rake is keeping that part of the plank clear in the air.

Forgive the really crude diagram, but I've tried to draw what I'm seeing in terms of the level of wear and what I'd expect to see. I've discounted the leading edge wear on the 'vertical' section simply because I think that this is not consistent across the whole edge, and I think it may actually be mud looking at how it smeared over the bolts at the front.



The blue line is what I'd expect if the plank were rigid and the car was raked. The red line is what I'm seeing as the wear on the plank on the Red Bull car. This is not to any sort of scale, just a relative indication for illustrative purposes.

[Reca]

I have couple of things to add to the discussion, but first of all, as it's been long time since last post, let me say a big "Hello" to everybody, those who maybe remember of me since many moons ago, and the "new" ones who don't.

Now, first thing, more a speculation that should be confirmed by someone (scarbs?) knowing exactly how the test goes.

The article 3.17.5 describing the test procedure, after all the details about positioning of rams, force applied, allowed deflection blah blah blah, continues with:

Stays or structures between the front of the bodywork lying on the reference plane and the survival cell may be present for this test, provided they are completely rigid and have no system or mechanism which allows non-linear deflection during any part of the test.

The way I read it, it would mean that, even if you have a stay on the front end of splitter when car is on track, you don't need to do the test with the stay mounted.
Actually, if the stay "casually happens to be" designed with a mechanism and/or non-linear deflection, it necessarily would have to be removed...

That would make any discussion about what causes the floor to flex, if by the contact with ground, how much that wears the plank and so on, totally pointless, in fact you could simply use an opportunely designed stay, more precisely something like, I don't know, a slim rod of the correct length... to keep the "see-saw" at a convenient angle with rest of floor, so when on track the car is raked, the fore section stays parallel to ground, preventing continuous contact thus wear of the plank.

Then at the moment of the test, all you need to do is to just remove the stay (or "accidentally" cause FIA to force you remove the stay by "casually" mentioning you are not absolutely sure its deflection is linear...), and voilà, the "see saw" is now allowed to rotate back to flat with rest of floor as the test requires...

Easier way wouldn't exist. Sure, it sounds "a bit" like blatant cheating, but it's not like the see-saw mechanism per se is particularly innocent to start with...


Second thing, this is a pic I took at the pitlane walkabout the Thursday in Monza, when luckily the RB7 was without floor:



I admit some of Nessie's pics are clearer than this but to my eyes it doesn't exactly look like an infinitively stiff mount with zero degrees of freedom.
Judging by the distance from the "keel", that "thing" shouldn't be located far from the, already mentioned by others, interruption of wear visible on the Webber's plank.

Up to you.

[myurr]

Interesting catch. Could be that the Red Bull stay is being used to pull the bib up to give it a non-flat bottom and allow lower ride height, and then is simply removed when tested. It certainly doesn't look designed for compression stiffness.

[hollus]

I have been zooming in and playing with the contrast in all those pictures from AMUS. I get the impression that the no-wear area is actually a depression in the plank.
In the pictures, I've marked with orange arrows areas that are abnormally dark, like shades, although the diffuse ambient light makes them very difficult to interpret. I also marked in green a similarly dark area that matches the darkeness of the surroundings, which would speak against the depression theory (but it is the only one I could find).



The rules specify a constant thickness for the plank, +/- 1mm, so the only way to do this would be to have an 11mm thick plank and a 9mm thick section there. Would this be enough to make this act as a flexing point, giving a well defined corner for deflection to create two straight sections rather than a cantilever?
A flexing point there would explain the very high wear immediately rearward from this no-wear area, and the more or less constant wear of the front section of the plank. To explain the high wear immediate forward of the no-wear area, one would have invoke either the banana shape of the see-saw as well.

[xpensive]

Great images hollus, but the two countersunk holes behind the depression, what's that all about then?

[hardingfv32]

"10 +/-1mm = 9 to 11 (10-1=9 10+1=11)"

No... You can consider information to the right of your target figure. Say you have a digital readout on the test instrument. In this case the number to the left of the decimal point is the number you must have or register. So, say your target is 11 mm, the readout will show 11, but there can also be an additional .499 on the readout before the instrument rounds to 12 mm.

Brian

[ringo]

Interesting catch. Could be that the Red Bull stay is being used to pull the bib up to give it a non-flat bottom and allow lower ride height, and then is simply removed when tested. It certainly doesn't look designed for compression stiffness.

The fasteneres have to mount to somewhere strong enough. That somewhere is the white thing in that pic.

In regards to the clean band, it's a tolerance issue as mentioned earlier. It's not about flexing or any of that jive.

The more i look at these pics, the more normal the redbull's plank wear looks.

Still asking for images of other car's planks too.

[hardingfv32]

hoolus is absolutely correct.

That is why I asked about how the wear was measured. If we assume that the plank can have a 2.98 difference in thickness and it is showing no wear, we can infer that this is the limit of movement of this system.

Some issues that detractor might raise:

1) Why the oval shape on each end of the "no wear" zone? Could this be to maintain the look of the chamfer and hide the existence of the thin plank area. Remember, we are trying to weaken this area, but we can sacrifice some of this goal to maintain stealthiness.

2) The rule that states the plank must "have a uniform thickness when new". Oddly there is no tolerance applied to this sentence.

3) "the two countersunk holes behind the depression, what's that all about then?"

These are the two specified 80 mm test holes located 750 mm from the nose/top. They are helpful to the banana theory, in that they weaken the plank in another area where it must bend again to get back to the reference plane.

Brian

[hardingfv32]

"Could be that the Red Bull stay is being used to pull the bib up to give it a non-flat bottom and allow lower ride height, and then is simply removed when tested."

No... The car will be tested as raced when the flatness of the reference plane is tested, +/- 5 mm.

Brian

[hardingfv32]

Something that has bothered me about this theory is why all the fasteners in the the area of the "no wear" rectangle. Why such an effort to fasten to a small independent section of floor that that is used to fill the hole that we see in the RB floor? While investigating the tolerance of the reference plane a thought came to mind about how to use the reference plain tolerances to advantage.

The reference plane has a tolerance of +/- 5 mm. So this means a possible total deviation of about 10.98 mm.

Why can't the individual section of floor that is needed to fill the hole in the floor be contoured within this tolerance to help with the "see saw" flex region that we are discussing. This would explain all the fasteners, especially the two in the "no wear" rectangle. The fasteners are being used to draw the plank onto the contoured floor section. The plank has no rules that specify it's straightness/flatness when installed.

Brian

[ringo]

[Tim.Wright]

No... You can consider information to the right of your target figure. Say you have a digital readout on the test instrument. In this case the number to the left of the decimal point is the number you must have or register. So, say your target is 11 mm, the readout will show 11, but there can also be an additional .499 on the readout before the instrument rounds to 12 mm.

Brian

I don't agree with this. If the test instrument says 11.1mm, you are too thick.

[tok-tokkie]

Great images hollus, but the two countersunk holes behind the depression, what's that all about then?

If you are talking about the two large round holes they are specified by FIA. The plank thickness is checked there (there are others further back).

I agree that the dark rectangular shape is a depression in the plank.

Ringo's picture of the crashed nose shows that it is just a cable that prevents the t tray deflecting downwards but would offer no resistance to deflection upwarads. I note that it is anchored with 2 bolts on the center line. The mystery 2 studs each side of it can be seen again. I wonder if thay are not ceramic non-sparking studs to protect the plank when it slides on the track.

[hollus]

Nice pic, Ringo.
Is the cable holding the tea-tray of the same type as the three hanging out of the nosecone?
Those cables were said to be sensors before, but why are there three? The wing is symmetrical. Sensors would be expected to come in twos.
This is starting to look more and more like the cables connect the wing and the T-tray. And I'll stop there, don't want to be accused of creating conspiracy theories.

[myurr]

"Could be that the Red Bull stay is being used to pull the bib up to give it a non-flat bottom and allow lower ride height, and then is simply removed when tested."

No... The car will be tested as raced when the flatness of the reference plane is tested, +/- 5 mm.

Brian

Is that a presumption or intimate knowledge of the rules and testing procedures?