Flexures

[ChironWSC]

I am looking for a suitable material (Steel) to use as suspension /wishbone Flexures. Also what heat treatment process to use after welding?
http://www.mulsannescorner.com/Lola675-2.html this link has a photo of the MG/Lola lower wishbone flexures.
Any suggestions?

Henry Nickless

[imull]

What are you using it for? Has the MG cars had any problems with suspension reliability?

At a guess I would say that these flexure things will only work for low amounts of suspension travel and will not be very resistant to larger impacts.

[ChironWSC]

The MG has not had any reliability problems with the flexures.
I am just looking at some ideas to try and remove some of the friction from the suspension which is mainly caused by the spherical bearings. We have only 25mm of suspension travel on the car. The wishbones would possibly need to be lifed for this type of design. But with the correct steel and heat treatment they could last along time. If i was to use a steel similar to that used on a coil spring for example then the life of the flexure should be good. I do see a potential week area if hit on the wheel this is something we would test.

[CFD-9]

We used flexure with great success at Ferrari in the mid 90's when Berger and Alesi were driving... They were only run on Alesi's car if memory serves though as Berger didn't trust them! It was a John Barnard innovation I believe!

I doubt you would need a heat treatment very different to that used on the standard wishbone, you just have to make sure you have designed it well!

[marcush.]

Dyson Racing did actually throw away those flexures in their MG-lolas as they experienced some negative effects under braking...

you may get rid of the stickslip effects ,yes but of course you add some spring force in both directions from your designed ride height (The flexure would have to have no preload at rideheight (?!?) The thing is imo not worth the gains obtainable.
The big gain was installation stiffness if I remember correctly.
The big question if feasible is not the suspension travel but how much angular movement is there needed for the flexure .

[avsfan733]

just like marc said, they work most effectively when unloaded at static ride heiht. thats why Ferrari has at least partially gone back to using rose joints. It allows a much larger range of ride height adjustment compared to the flexures.