What caused Nick Heidfeld's car to explode?

[Road of Bones]

http://en.espnf1.com/renault/motorsport/story/56150.html

It is as I suspected then - there was a failure in the material of the exhaust pipe that caused it to disintegrate, and the valve air-bottle exploded in the subsequent conflagration.

Nice to have these little mysteries explained!

 

[FB]

Just to throw my two pence worth in, liquid nitrogen would require an expansion system to make it work and then a pressure regulation system to allow it to be controlled so it would almost certainly be just compressed nitrogen. What should concern the F1 authorities is the speed with which this gas cylinder exploded, from the pits to when it exploded was what, less than 3 minutes? A decent quality gas cylinder should not explode this quickly so one has to assume they have down graded the cylinder construction to save weight.

Very dangerous in my humble opinion.

 

[Slyboogy]

What caused Nick Heidfeld's car to explode?

Nick Heidfeld himself...

 

[Fenderman]

Ah! So his bottle exploded!

 

[FB]

The gas cylinder was to drive the valve springs.

For a long time, the biggest headache of all was keeping control of the valves given the less than ideal characteristics of steel coil valve springs. Using lightweight titanium rather than steel valves helped, but titanium does not make a suitable spring. The breakthrough came with pneumatic valve actuation, which offers precision of control, even at 17,000rpm, and consequently is now universal in Fl.
These so-called air springs opened the door to today's crankshaft speeds from a V10 engine, with its 40 large valves. The 32-valve DFV V8 had an 85-67mm bore, while today's Vl0s have bore sizes in the region of 92-96mm, with correspondingly larger valves (albeit titanium rather than the steel employed in 1967).

http://www.pureluckdesign.com/ferrari/f1engine/

 

[Fenderman]

http://scarbsf1.com/valves.html

 

[FB]

From Lenny Kravitz's BBC practice feed:

Renault have had to make some changes to their car to prevent a repeat of the explosion that happened following the fire that affected Nick Heidfeld in the last race in Hungary. The air bottle exploded. It was made of carbon-fibre and had no heat protection, because it was not in a place where high temperatures were normally a problem. They have now made a new one out of titanium and added some heat shielding

Who the **** makes a pressure container from carbon fibre. More importantly, why didn't the FIA look at this and say "bit dangerous guys, make it out of metal would you?". Finally, TITANIUM! What's wrong with a steel container, better pressure resistance, cheaper and almost certainly lighter. F1 engineers, the best in the world? Bollocks!

 

[Slyboogy]

What caused Nick Heidfeld's car to explode?

His rage that he was going to get replaced by B.Senna for the next few races.

 

[Road of Bones]

From Lenny Kravitz's BBC practice feed:
TITANIUM! What's wrong with a steel container, better pressure resistance, cheaper and almost certainly lighter. F1 engineers, the best in the world? ********!

A Titanium bottle would be much lighter than a steel one, as it's superior strength would allow a thinner wall construction for the required pressure application. Much more expensive though!

 

[Fenderman]

Trouble with listening to Ted is that the teams like misleading him. Carbon fibre for a pressure container is a pretty silly idea and seems unlikely but not impossible. Titanium or a titanium alloy would be practical although the "walls" of the container would probably require the same thickness of material. The saving would be in the weight - around 45% - compared to using steel.

 

[RasputinLives]

After recent events my bets on Eric Boullier pressing a big red self-destruct button on the pit wall