• Home
  • motorsport
  • VLN project 2010: From series Ford Focus RS to racing car - cage installation

VLN project 2010: From series Ford Focus RS to racing car - cage installation

Rossen Gargolov
VLN project 2010: From series Ford Focus RS to racing car
Subscriptions & booklets

And because the time until the first race on March 27, 2010 is tight, the students from Germany's largest engineering college, together with their professor, Frank Herrmann, who is responsible for the project, decided to break new ground when it came to safety cells. 'If we had insisted on a welded cage, the car would have been inaccessible for weeks,' says team manager Jan Derenbach, summarizing the time dilemma that is common in motorsport at the beginning of the new season.

U nd there the budding engineers with their cage calculations Prof, the specialists for theory in their own ranks, and with the company Heggemann from Büren, who have specialists for practical matters on board as their technology partner, the decision is made in favor of a bolted safety cell specially developed for the Ford Focus. 'Through the use of high-tech materials from aircraft construction, state-of-the-art welding technology and new, specially developed connecting elements, we have succeeded in developing a screw cage that is not inferior to a welding cell in terms of safety' , explains Steffen Zacharias, Head of Sales and Technology at Heggemann, proudly. This is made possible by the material with the internal identifier 1.7734 /15VDC6, which has a very favorable ratio of weight to technical-mechanical properties.

The screwed cage cannot compete with the welded cage

The great advantage of this weight-optimized steel, which is used in aviation, among other things in the chassis area, is that it retains the mechanical properties of the base material in the event of thermal loads - such as welding. In this respect, the weld seams required in cage construction do not result in any significant weakening of the entire cell. On the other hand, the forming of the overall significantly stiffer material is more difficult than, for example, the 25CrMo4 alloy that is otherwise often used in cage construction.

And the whole thing gets more expensive too. 'A screw cage of this quality class is not necessarily cheaper than an identically designed welding cell,' says the followingZacharias, 'has the advantage that I can dismantle the front part of the cage if necessary, especially in club sports and with cars that are not used exclusively in racing.' In this case, only the rear main bar remains, which benefits ergonomics as well as the functionality of the side airbags. In addition, the interventions on the series body are significantly less than with a welded safety cell.

The screwed cage cannot compete with the welded cage

However, this also has disadvantages. Although the course of the load cases to be calculated in advance and subsequently certified (a pressure test on the main bracket with 7.5 times the vehicle weight plus 150 kilograms for the driver and fillers as well as a simulated side impact with 3.5 times the calculated weight in Height of the driver's head) is similarly good - with regard to the global torsional stiffness of a chassis, the screwed and welded cage cannot compete. In professional vehicles dedicated solely to racing, a permanently welded cell is therefore preferable because it allows a better connection to the vehicle structure. On the other hand, a high-quality screw cage could be an alternative for all other cars that are close to series production and partially used for civil purposes.

0 Comments

Leave a reply

Name *