Safety fences on racetracks

When the worst, a collision, happens, physics is simple and cruel. Slowdown - this is a change in speed in a unit of time telling how loaded the human body and organs will be in a collision. And in severe accidents, these values ​​in F1 exceed 40G values. The latest death in F1 in 2014, when Jules Bianchi died as a result of an accident, showed that forces of value were acting on his body. over 90G. These were the result of an instant stop under an excavator pulling another race car out of the sand. Instant stops resulting from a collision comparable to a collision with a wall.

Fatal collisions had, of course, occurred many years earlier, when the safety of race cars was rather poor. No seat belts, even no helmets and fully open race cars, so he was one of them first safety measures the use of hay bales in excursion zones. These mitigated the consequences of the collision or. strictly physically extended the time of the collision and took part of the energy into their own deformation. This reduced the forces or. deceleration and the chances of the racer surviving increased. Of course, the effects were not great, but they saved many serious consequences. The weakness of the bales was the zeal and that they collapsed and scattered along the track at the collision, making the track very slippery. So the bales said goodbye to racing in the XNUMXs.

The next step in the evolution of fences were wire fences. These, if we look at it strictly physically again, performed the idea of ​​stopping the car on the longest possible route and thus minimizing the acceleration. But they had a very big downside - they practically did every collision fences and pegs tangled in the race car and many times it happened that the racer could not get out of the car, and this was fatal when there was another fire in the accident. A few racers lost their lives on that account as well.

Therefore, the next step in the evolution of guardrails was the introduction tires in excursion zones and metal fences in parts where a collision rarely occurs at a large angle; hence on the flat parts. With the introduction of tires loaded in three or four layers, they got spring effect, which absorbs energy well in the event of a collision and reduces risk. The downside of the initial versions of this protection was that the tires loaded on top of each other fell onto the race car after the collision and the rescuers had a lot of work to do first by removing them before they could even make their way to the racer. So it started individual to connect the rubber towers, and the front is set according to current practice rubber fence, which plays two roles. Prevents the car from crawling under the tires after a collision and allows it to crash at a small angle; it is almost in the direction of the fence, the racer can still save the car and continue the race. This fence concept is also the most popular as it allows high level of security at low cost (u) consumption of used tires)

The last step in the development of security fences began more than ten years ago with the use of so-called Tecpro blocks. These are basically made of polyethylene, but we know two blocks. The first is absorption R2 block (red), which separates the metal fence from the reinforcing block R1 (gray block). The task of the first is to absorb energy when the car collides with an R1 block, which has a steel plate that prevents the car from breaking through the block and crawling under the fence (as in the case of tires) and special nylon straps connecting individual R1 blocks. The inside of the R1 block is covered with polyurethane foam, while the R2 block is hollow. The difference in weight is thus 110kg (R1) versus 45kg (R2).

The main advantage of the blocks is the ability to absorb large amounts of energy, and they were tested with frontal collisions at a speed of 218 km / h. 6 layout variants have been developed, Fia has approved two, and due to their design and size, they need less than tires. For 1000m straight orgasms we need 1000 blocks, while for the same length we need about 25.000 tires.