C4.1 Chassis

[JustARcFan]

The master has spoken

Originally Posted by elvo

Fabs is 100 million percent correct. Technically.

HOWEVER.

There is one little twist in this story. People tend to buy expensive little cars and plow them into solid objects at high speed, I think that is a fair thing to conclude from this thread. So manufacturers are forced to design chassis to cope with that. That is where material strength does influence stiffness, through dimensions.
Example: if the C4.1 chassis were made out of 6061-T6, it would need to be 4mm thick in order to be strong enough. If it had been 7075-T6 - which is very strong - 3mm would have sufficed.
Both materials behave exactly the same in the elastic part of the deformation curve, but the strongest one allows lighter construction, and thus, more flex. A thinner chassis flexes more.

Stronger alloy = more flex. Counterintuitive, eh?


Very similar story: http://www.willswing.com/Support/FAQItem.asp?reqFAQ=66