I could talk about F1 forever and that alone would settle it down
How and why are advanced materials used in F1 is indeed an exciting topic, but sadly on of which I have limited knowledge. Given, though, that the lifespan of an F1 car and a consumer automobile is as comparable as apples and oranges, I doubt that it would, alone, settle everything and forever.
my main concern is always the best performance/fuel efficiency result for a road going car that I can afford.
Good.
So, the road tests only serves to give some idea about the performance side of such cars.
Sure, but roadtests are worthless when it comes to materials. How they behave, advantages, disadvantages, better alternatives. Unless roadtests these days take place in a structural lab and I've been completely clueless all this time.
As for different car's materials characteristics, specific strength was the technical argument presented in favour of 'Flash' Bainite for future car applications - ''Almost sounds too good to be true'', just to quote someone else's post - and a specific strenght comparison table for different metals was shown in that post.
And why was Bainite's specific strength brought up in the first place? Because that's where Bainite is competitive. And then GFRP's specific strength was brought up for comparison. And that's only one of the tens of relevant parameters.
Adding carbon fiber, which is already used in state-of-art car applications for some time now (we can go back to more than thirty years ago) to such a table only serves to show how far away those metals are from carbon fiber in that regard
Once again, a comparison table regarding the specific strength of various materials covers only one parameter. There are many more.
Now, since you've brought up aviation to the table and since the problems with the manufacturing of airplane parts due to the relatively new processes used to make CFRP components are so BIG, why aerospace engineering even bothers to go down that route?! Isn't the carbon fiber's specific strenght advantage so huge that makes the investment worthwile?!
Certainly. But at the same time, it shows that the material (CFRP) isn't perfect yet. If it were, then we would fly around in all-CFRP planes, which wouldn't need such an extensive inspection every some number of flight hours. Yes, the material is promising, but noone has complete and blind confidence to it.
Metals, on the other hand, have proven themselves over the years and man's understanding of every failure mechanism is outstanding. The accuracy of computer models and calculations, too.
There are still too many uncertainties with CFRP.
Besides, you seem to forget a very basic difference between cars and planes... you see, planes aren't supposed to endure crashes and collisions with each others. Does your engineering background understands this or do I need to explain it to you like you had none?!
Cute.
Seriously now, collision is just a load case when designing a car (or a plane). Surviving 20 years on the road is another load case - an equally important one - one that F1 doesn't care about
I, for one, need to be sure that my car won't fall apart after some years of usage. So far, I've managed to stress one for 25 years and it's still going strong. CFRP still has to prove itself.
Sidenote: Just for the record, the Airbus A380 is designed to withstand a landing without it's landing gear, so yes, planes take impact into consideration as well.
I want to know more about this structural scan. What have you got for me?!
It's acoustic ultrasound and the device that performs it comes in all shapes and sizes. There's one that can scan the whole wing of a 787 Dreamliner (given how and why it was delayed, due to the shockingly extensive crack it developed during the test flights at the end of its development, where the wing meets the fuselage [*]). As for the science of how this works, I've no idea.
I've only witnessed a handheld small device of this type, used to scan small specimen of CFRP plates before and after various tests in a Materials' Mechanics lab at the local university.
[*] Due to this delay of a year or a year and a half the Dreamliner's nickname was Summer Night's Dream.
