Why F1 Cars Use These Weird Springs
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- čas přidán 20. 10. 2022
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Why do F1 cars have 4 wheels but use 8 springs to control them?
Well, F1 cars produce literal tonnes of downforce, and that enables them to stick in the corners - but it does give the car’s suspension a tough job.
Not only do they need to hold the 798kg of a Formula 1 car - but also the 1-2 TONNES of downforce on top of that. But on top of THAT, the suspension needs to keep the tyres as evenly loaded as possible so the car’s a bit easier to drive.
Rules were simplified in 2022 to outlaw all the fancy tools that F1 teams used to use in the suspension such as remote springs, remote hydraulics and one-way damping - which deserves another video entirely.
These tools were made famous by the ‘collapsing rear wings’ (in case you don’t know what I mean. The rear suspension on some cars last year would collapse mid-way down the straight to save on drag. It was genius) It was allowed in 2021, but is banned now.
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#Formula1 #Suspension #Engineering - Auta a dopravní prostředky
Quote of the year. A tire in the air doesn't typically give a lot of grip.
Until it hits you in the head
Paul Walker 2014 ish: cars don’t fly
@@AlwaysEwok until they do
Except if you corner over Hamiltons car
Put it in quotes.
"Typically...a tire that is in the air, doesn't produce much grip" hahahahah, I love you man!
I think you've mistaken which part is the stiffer on a dual-rate spring in the graphics. Typically the part with higher pitch, ie. the more loosely coiled part of the spring, is the stiffer part. Therefore the tightly coiled part should compress first.
Yes, the whole video shows the spring rates in reverse. More coils=more flex. Softer.
came here to find this, you are correct.
You do realize spring metal hardness varies. 🤔
It is a bit hard to tell from a distance. All else being equal, more coils is a softer spring. But a 300mm long spring with 10 coils versus a 150mm spring with 10 coils, all else being equal, have the same spring rate. The wire diameter plays a huge role, as does the diameter of the coils as well. The type of metal, from the few I've seen, doesn't make a huge difference, mostly slight variations of steel / stainless steel, maybe +-20% but a few coils can halve or double a spring rate.
This is not the case in the example of 5:24
Springs don't require a minimum for to "activate" all springs will compress to some degree regardless of how small of a load is applied. What happens is the soft spring eventually bottoms out and you're left with a stiffer spring.
spring preload. if you have a coilover with a 500 lb/in spring on it, and compress the spring 1" with the nut for adjusting preload, the spring will not move until the force is greater than its preload. in this case, the first 500 lbs would produce no compression of the spring.
@@mustang351c4 No, reload is when you compress it before. If you applied 500 lbs to a spring rated at 500 lbs. Per inch. It would compress one inch. All things move with even the small amount a force. Even a cinder block wall moved when you throw a basketball it...
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@@mcduvall2000Your missing the point. You have a rigid barrier that keeps the spring from expanding past some height h. If that height is choosen so that the spring is exerting 500 Newtons of force at that height then the spring won't collapse below height h until you exceed 500 Newtons.
Yes, if you have a force of 250 Newtons it has an effect on the overall system but it doesn't collapse the spring more. It's the same way that flicking a styrofoam peanut is always going to move the peanut but it only gets crushed if you hit if really hard.
(tho obviously these are all macroscopic approximations...at an atomic level even sound waves move things).
If you count these as 8, I would add another 6 to them because each main and third element can also use bump rubbers to control the stiffness and ride height from a certain point in the travel range. Very likely on the 3rd elements, I don't know if they would use them during normal track use on the 4 corner units as well.
Oh hello pedal and physics general obsesivity and randomness person
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@@alunesh12345 In SPEED we TRUST.
@@alunesh12345 Ok you've convinced me with that comment.
@@alunesh12345 Hail satan!
Petition for Scott to drive a 2023 fp session
Even just a test.
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That’s not how springs work. You don’t get zero compression in the stiff portion until you get the soft portion binding. And in the case of two separate springs stacked in series you do not get zero compression in the stiff one until the soft one binds. If you have a 100 N/mm spring and a 200 N/mm spring and add a 1000 N load what happens? The 100 N/mm spring compresses by 10 mm AND the 200 N/mm spring compresses by 5 mm, for a total of 15 mm of compression. They are both subjected to the load and they both compress just as much as they would as if they were the only spring there. The 200 N/mm spring would not be sitting there doing nothing until the 100 N/mm spring started binding. That’s impossible. They’re both subjected to the same force. And they both react to the same force. What would actually happen with those two springs is they would be a system equivalent to a 66.67 N/mm spring until the point where the 100 N/mm spring starts binding, at which point it stops behaving like a 66.67 N/mm spring system and starts behaving like a lone 200 N/mm spring. Once the 100 N/mm spring starts binding it can then be treated as a solid piece, or to put it another way, it can then be ignored.
1/total spring behaviour = 1/spring rate A + 1/spring rate B
So, before binding you have two springs in series:
1/total springrate = 1/100 + 1/200
1/total springrate = 0.01 + 0.005
1/0.015
66.67
And once that 100 N/mm portion starts binding you simply remove it from the equation and you’re left with the performance of the 200 N/mm portion. The total system is softer than its two components until the softer of those components ceases to be able to do its job, at which point the total system gets as stiff as the stiffer of the two components, since that’s all that’s left doing the job.
Great explanation!
1:30 Sorry this is just not true, the amount of roll doesn't affect load transfer. A stock 2CV and one fitted with F1 springs have identical load transfer taking a turn at the same G force. One corners flat and one rolls a lot, but total load transfer is effectively the same.
i don't think he said anything about the same g force though. softer springs enable faster speeds through slow corners, so more g force technically
@@SHRModding Hmm well the difference between soft and hard springs in a hairpin will be pretty small. I think Driver61, as he has done before, mistakes the car 'attitude' (roll or pitch) for weight transfer, thinking that stiffer magically means less transfer. A mistake often made btw, not just by Driver61.
@@NielsHeusinkveld fair enough 👍
Progressive Springs aren't that unusual from what I understand. I used to have Progressive Springs in my front forks on my motorcycle.
Ikr. I have them in my car and they weren't even expensive.
Yes, they are always used in motorcycles
Almost every spring is progressive. Having a linear spring is really hard, same with dampers. Which is why you shims stuff for rallying.
While it's true that progressive and/or dual-rate springs aren't that uncommon, it isn't true that 'almost every' spring is progressive.
Both are used, linear can be cheaper, but you'll find a lot of high-end racing spings that are linear. Nothing wrong with either of them if set up correctly.
Eibach used them for 30 years progressive rats springs is an old item . With the benefits stated soft then hard when you need them . My experience is they road better than stock ones and then cornered much better.
Someone at Driver61 has been watching Kyle Engineers
please talk about those outlawed suspension things
That dual rate suspension is going to give varying ride heights so the car would need to be set up so it has grip at all those heights. An explanation of how that is done would have been useful.
"Typically a tire in the air doesn't product much grip" has me wanting to know the one edge case where a tire in the air DOES produce grip.
Good and accurate verbal description, but I believe a stress vs strain graph would really help to convey the essence of your message.
1:52 “typically” I wonder when a tire in the air does produce grip. hahaha
We use those on bicycles too. We call them progressive springs because they progressively get stiffer further in the travel. Thanks for the video! I never really understood how they work but I do now thanks to your video
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I thought you were going to talk about heave spring rather than dual rate springs, a bit disappointed on that one :/
For road cars, the spring where the coil has different strength for diffent parts (usually implemented with non-equal rise per turn) is usually called progressive springs in marketing material. It's much better than regular spring but more expensive to manufacture.
Correction: the potion of the spring with more coils per length is in fact the softer spring.
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5:25 - Description is incorrect. The bottom section of the spring will be the lower spring rate. You have more material in the same amount of spring height. Essentially you are spreading the deflection over more material. Where the coils get spread out you will have a larger spring rate as each individual coil has to go through more deflection for the overall spring height to change.
Another way engineers tune the springs is by adding material like rubber in between the coils. Allowing the coils to bind earlier in some places vs others. It changes the shape of the k(x) curve by moving the inflection/transition point closer to uncompressed height.
you explained this beautifully
When setting up the F1 cars in iRacing; I now understand what “pre-load” does! Thanks 👍
This man blows my mind on the daily.
In this video:
How stiff you ought to be when approaching various curves.
Great video. Thank you :)
6:25 I’m not sure that’s quite how they work. The soft spring doesn’t just bottom out flat before the hard spring moves. Springs in series compress together and arent affected by each other. Dual rate shocks have a crossover point that is manually set this is the point where the soft spring locks out and all the load is on the hard spring for the remainder of the travel.
Not if the springs have different resistance. The softer spring will compress first, until the overall load on the system is enough to start moving the harder spring. Kyle Engineers has a much more in-depth video about this, where he also shows a 3D printed model of how it works. It's very well explained
Agreed. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about or he simplified the explanation for his target audience.
@@Excludos that’s not how springs work if you had a spring and hang 10kg off it it will stretch a certain amount. Then if you hang a soft spring off the stiff spring then hang the 10kg off that the stiff spring will still extend the same amount as it did before. I don’t wanna sound big headed but I did this stuff at university on an automotive engineering course. Springs in series don’t affect each other
@@Excludos You're confused (understandably) as Kyle describes a different system. George is right when two springs are just stacked in series, as Driver61 showed in this video.
@@georgeoliver8300 Think about it. If you have 2 springs. The thicker one takes 1300kg before it starts compressing and the other, much thinner one starts compressing at compressing at 700kg and designed to bottom out at 1300kg and you place them on top of each other, then the stiffer spring doesn't really move before the softer one starts bottoming out. Of course they'll have some overlap to make the transition smooth.
ahhhh thats why guanyu crashed at Silverstone, his grip was limited cos all 4 tires were in the air
I really wish you used some Miata clips in this video. Love that car :D
Springs are a whole industry/ science on their own
Progressive spring technology has been around in the offroad motorcycle industry since the 1970s. In the last 20 years motorcycles have scrapped that style of suspension in favor of mechanical rising rate linkage combined with speed sensitive hydralic damping. It will be interesting to see where F1 car suspension goes in the next few years.
please do a video on remote springs, remote hudraulics and one way damping
As a supposition as an option of using a torsion bar with a dual spring rate capability, what if the torsion bar had three splines located longitudinally, with two of the splines being located traditionally at the ends and the third spline be located at some percentage of the length, so that a arm at that location would bottom on a dampened stop before full rotation of the torsion bar for range of suspension travel, having the effect of shortening the torsion bar, for a secondary increase in spring rate, the dampened stop providing a progressive transition from the lower to the higher spring rate?
I think they already use multi tension torsion bars, but I think it wasn't in recent style of design as its not independent so only use as a baseline tune rather than springs which can do more finite tuning.
I think it was used exclusively a few years go to save weight of springs? Now they sacrificed weight for more control (using springs)
5:50-discussion about pre-loading springs: …slight tension…>…slight compression…
I have those kind of springs on my alfa 147 1.6 . Ride is compliant yet very stable through the corners. Those are stock btw
I can visualise dual stiffness with coils, but how does it work with a torsion bar?
Instead of a single rubber bumper there would be a second one halfway the torsion bar
Your description of a pair of springs operating is series is incorrect.
Both springs are compressed by any applied force until the softer spring becomes coil bound.
We have dual rate and progressive springs on MTB too although, nobody really sees the point of the progressive when air shocks exist for MTB.
Thank you🥰
What a fantastic video!
Damn... my 50cc bike has f1 suspension springs!!
Talk about drive by wire, launch mode, anti-stall; and why some have better starts than others. They should know how to drag race by now. Some of it is strategic, I believe, but some seem to just go south.
Another thing they use are progressive springs, which are designed to have 100+ spring rates over the entirety of the spring. Progressive springs are more useful because they make the transition between softer and stiffer spring rates less extreme. A driver can very clearly tell when the spring rates are changing on a dual or tri-rate springs. Having a progressive spring takes care of the inconsistencies of driving on an ever-changing track.
progressive, dual rate, and other multi spring configurations have been around for yeeeeaaaarrrrsss. this is old school tech.
the problem with these springs is when you hit something heavy at low speeds you can bind the soft-spring and then get major recoil from the stiffer spring causing the car to effectively launch itself... I am aware there are mitigations (such as dampeners) for this but it doesn't stop it entirely.. basically the cars are a tiny bit less safe to drive.
The content was brilliant.😇
Progressive rate springs - this is a very, very old idea.
Was used by motorcycle manufacturers (certainly Honda with the original CBR), but with limited success. Albeit, this is far from a direct comparison - most notable as bikes don't generate downforce. Either way, the riders generally junked the springs in favour of conventional items as it made the bike unstable mid-corner and I believe conventional springs are still the way forward today.
Love the vids
this just sounds like a copy of kyle.engineers video on this topic that he recently made
I was thinking just the same
Not really, Kyle had a video about the collapsing spring system, which he cleverly demonstrated with some 3D printed parts. Driver61 showed two springs in series, which behave differently. If one spring has a rate of 100 and the other a rate of 50, in series that becomes an effective spring rate of 1/(1/50+1/100) = 33.3. If the softer spring bottoms out after say 25mm of travel, it no longer takes part and you only have the rate of 100 spring left. This can be used to really have two different rates of spring while driving, as might be the case in some race cars. Alternatively they are called 'helper springs', where they are really quite soft springs that already are fully compressed by the weight of the car. They are just there to keep the main spring seated and allow some more rebound travel without the big spring rattling loose. Most GT race cars use helper springs as without them, you only have ~10mm of rebound travel before the spring sits loose. Maybe more rebound travel is desired, so the helper spring pushes the suspension down a bit further when you go over a kerb and the tire is hanging in the air, so you have more damping and suspension travel when you hit the road again. That is one possible reason anyway.
@@NielsHeusinkveld yeah thanks for the clear cut comparison. honestly i judged a book by its cover as i only saw a part of the video before commenting so that is completely my fault. both videos were informative as well as your comment
Extremely simple and elegant. Bascically a composite spring.
5:20, spring diagram is wrong. The stiffer part is the upper part, the softer part is the one below, of course it becomes very stiff once fully compressed
Kyle engineers already covered this 3 weeks ago
How is it possible to have a dual rate spring with a torsion bar spring type??
How is this variable spring rate produced if the team uses torsion springs. I have seen most teams running torsion bars with dampers.
Great videos. As pleasant as you are to look at, I wish you would lengthen the clips which depict the mechanisms/designs/graphs you are trying to explain rather than quickly cutting away to show you talking. After all, isn’t learning about F1 why we watch Driver61?
You know, at the peak of the porpoising debacle this year, I thought, in my crude understanding of vehicle dynamics, why the teams wouldn't just limit the suspension travel to just a millimeter or two from bottoming out, but this dual rate spring makes so much sense because with my idea it just makes that limit the bottom of the bouncing crest, while the stiffer grade spring still gives a bit of give as a suspension should
I don't understand porpoising to any great deal but don't forget the tires themselves are very bouncy undamped springs! So you might still get some form of oscillation even if the suspension wouldn't move! :-)
I guess the trade off from the ground effect in high speed it's not worth it, probably with a millimeter or two the downforce will not be enough to stick the car on the floor.
@@NielsHeusinkveld good quality tires shouldn't oscillate by themselves, they'll sure absorb some bumbs but that's another story.
if you lock the springs a few mm before bottoming out, you remove the part of the car that can handle bumps in the road etc, any small turn or bump would thus be transferred to the car and make it probably near impossible to handle
@@afoxwithahat7846 Well the nature of all tires is that they are very bouncy, as you can see when a tire gets disconnected from a car during a crash and it goes on a bouncy ride. So if some aero load fluctuations happen and you have no suspension, the tire will get squished periodically and it will be uncontrolled.
damn todays my bday lol, and thanks for the info
"Typically a tire that's in the air doesn't produce much grip" hahaha.
Is this what those slow bump, slow rebound, fast bump, fast rebound in those racing sims actually is or this thing is unique to F1? I also remember something about bump transition and rebound transition, never fully understood those.
No, you are talking about damping. Fast/slow refers to the speed that the damper compresses/rebounds, if you have long whoops the suspension might go trough a lot of travel at relatively low speed, but if you hit a sudden sharp edge in the road you will have a high velocity as the wheel travels up trough the stroke.
Slow/fast bump/rebound (In my mind) are settings that are adjustable through the shocks. The progressive springs are there to hold the car up and flat whether it's going nowhere and weighs 1000lbs or going flat out with an additional 2000 lbs of aero-downforce. (No I didn't check my values).
Basically, I think your settings are more for how quickly the shock allows the tires to move while the springs make sure you can hit top speed without bottoming out.
Dampers contain orifices that allow the oil inside to move from one side of the piston to the other. This is how they dampen movement. The oil can only move through the orifices so quickly. They dampen the movement by the simple fact that the oil will only go through so quickly. Make the orifice bigger they will allow quicker movement. Make the orifice smaller and they will allow slower movement. A damper with just one fixed orifice has a fixed amount of damping that does not change regardless of input speed. And this setup would not allow you to have a different amount of damping for bump and for rebound. It would be the same amount of damping for both directions.
Now, say you decide that you would want a different amount of damping for bump than you would for rebound. How could you accomplish that? You could stop using a simple orifice and in place of it you could use two one-way valves. If you want stiffer bump and softer rebound then you install a one-way valve for bump that is smaller and gives more restriction, and a one-way valve for rebound that is larger and gives less restriction. You can install larger or smaller valves of whatever size you like for either direction to give them the behaviour you want in that direction.
Now you realize that not all bumps in the road are the same. And you think maybe you would like to have different damping behaviour for the different types of bumps in the road. How could you do that? Well, you take your one-way valve idea and go a step further. Now you have valves that can give different amounts of damping behaviour depending on how quickly the damper is moving through its stroke. You design them with a specific speed threshold which allows you to dial in the desired behaviour during slow movement and a different behaviour during fast movement. Slow movements are what you encounter when accelerating and braking, and other gradual changes like going up or down inclines in the road. Fast movements are what you encounter with actual bumps in the road, or hitting curbs at the apex or track out sections of the track.
What I’m unsure of is how they mechanically get these changes in valve behaviour to occur. I’m kind of thinking they’re using two valves for each direction, with one of them always opening, and one of them opens or closes only when it passes that speed threshold. I’ve never actually looked into it, though. I wonder if anyone has shared how these things work. How the parts are designed. Perhaps I’ll Google that up today if I remember later.
no these are damper stiffnesses. the spring rate / wheel rate is what controls the springs
Did they abandoned the torsion bar spring?
really should just allow active suspension. less stuff. less complicated. cheaper & gives drivers a better more predictable ride.
I thought they all used torsion bars? We're the springs shown just as a visual aid to understand the concept?
Why don't they mount wings and/or ground effect tunnels to the wheel hubs so that only the wheels are affected by the downforce and use softter springs for the chassis? ...oh right, Lotus tried it....and it got banned. .....
Weird springs but shows normal springs in the thumbnail
Would it be even better to have a spring which kind of gradually becomes stiffer the further down the bottom you go? So that you have some kind of curve, the more speed, the more force, the more the spring contracts relatively.
They have that option, and basically all ride height sensitive aero cars use this, by adding bump rubbers. These are progressively stiff rubbers that are hit when the damper is compressed beyond certain amount. They can play with the length and stiffness and even the natural damping of these rubber elements to further tweak the way the ride heights change with speed. For aero load setup, bump rubbers are probably more or at least an equal part than the springs.
It's insane how damn heavy a modern F1 car is
air go whoosh car go nyooooooooooom
Jacob o neal needs to update his video, and get sponsorship from F1 he did an awesome job with his animagraphs
Getting a title as a present is a relationship ender, it's a more insulting nothing gift than a charity certificate "in my name".
The ad was very poorly timed, neither I or my brother could follow the video because of the ad placement.
Isnt this video a bit misleading? I thought F1 cars used torsion bars now?
Weird? ... just like many cars with variable rate springs.
What is weird about those springs? I have them in a Opel Manta B. That car is 40 years old. Tuning springs, but still nothing new.
This should have been a short
I am wondering how often F1 teams have to replace the actual wheels, ( not the tires). They are forged, but must take a beating?
Believe in JESUS today, confess and repent of your sins. No one goes to heaven for doing good but by believing in JESUS who died for our sins. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.(John 3:16)❤️😁❤️😋❤️
All tire sets used to get thrown out including the wheel, nowadays they sell the used tires with the wheels or just the used wheels and perelli destroys the used and un unsed tires from each race weekend.
2:57 "supple"
I wonder what my spring rate is. 😏
Is Establishedtitles a scam?
Yes
#BringBackActiveSuspension
We use progressive springs or dual rate as you silly brits call them in RC racing
Now that you are posting in pt BR dub, i gonna use a Brazilian slang, aulas cria.
Why did 80s F1 cars have such poor rebound damping. I was watching some late 80s footage and was quite surprised to see the cars bouncing into the air after each bump from the suspension rebounding. This is usually solved by stiffening the rebound damping, why wasn't this done during the 1980s?
Probably because suspension technology wasn’t as advanced back then.
@@vazione5410 Suspension technology was plenty advanced to allow for stiff rebound damping.
i thought they use carbon torsion bars instead of springs now
dont f1 cars use torsion bars and not springs?
Kyle engineers
I bet they could save weight if they made a simpler system....
anggaplah pakai per daun tapi dari carbon fiber. Atau pakai per batang lentur
19 views and 27 likes. Love it 😅
Ok but f1 doesn't use coil springs...
The McMurtry Speirling makes all this complicated spring junk and F1 and FormulaE obsolete. F1 should at least adopt double suspension like the Lotus 79 and FWD electric motors with high power Regen like FormulaE.
"***typically a tire that's in the air doesn't produce much grip***"
What kind of new physics is this? :))))
Magic Grip, dummy!
Bluethoot grip
every parts in f1 car are weird, from normal car point of view, of course...well maybe few nuts and bolts are the same, but i still wouldnt be surprised if it was custom made.
You should check out a video called ‘life of a bolt’ from red bull. They’re titanium and custom made.
“Haha I’ve discovered a new idea/tech that will allow us to go a little faster! I’ll tell all the teams”
F1 rule makers: “fuck you and your fancy and clever ideas”
Hearing time and time again all these small inventions that the F1 Ban is depressing, imagine how much slower F1 is going to get in the coming years, 2026 is going to be a disaster.
Nice job ripping off Kyle Engineer's content!
Estabilished a title for a Mercedes for a sacrifice for a time in 2023. Avanced now. In final in 2022. One more time
Okay so why?!
:)
First? Ayyyy P1
1st
dont even bother watching until 5:04
Believe in JESUS today, confess and repent of your sins. No one goes to heaven for doing good but by believing in JESUS who died for our sins. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.(John 3:16)❤️😁❤️😋❤️