[culver]

Hey,

I have been of this forum for a bit. Sorry for the delay in getting back. BTW, some new info has come up since I last added this. I’ve added a finite element model of a leaf spring mounted as GM has done to the article. It shows how lifting the right side actually causes the left side of the spring to also move up.
Imageeformed spring model iso and plane.JPG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also, there was a person who was arguing with me regarding the Corvette leaf spring acting like a live axle. The person had cited a MT article which stated something to that effect. Via the Motor Trend forum we found out what the MT editor had meant by his comment… and it was incorrect. He was basically assuming that because the two sides of the spring were connected, pulling up on the right would make the left go down like a seesaw. Completely wrong as the illustration above shows. Even the magazines get it wrong from time to time.

Matra,
The flex part and moving airfoils could be an issue. Of course the existing suspension arms do flex. All materials under load will flex to some degree… but most of the time the flex is so small as to not matter.

The whole flex idea has all sorts of implications. Mind you grand prix cars (and many other cars) in the past did use leaf springs as both spring and arm. Flexures as suspension joints are common in racing. F1 cars have used them at suspension pivots in recent years.

Opel’s racing version of the Astra did something similar. The rules for what ever class the Astra was running in said the car had to run the same rear suspension as the production car; a twist beam. Well the problem with twistbeams is their tendency to toe out the outside tire under hard cornering loads. The engineers were only allowed to have suspension “joints” where the existing Astra had them. So the engineers made a rather complex, triangulated looking twist beam that used a number of flexures. Like a real twist beam the assembly was supposed to flex as the suspension was articulated. However, unlike the production parts, this acted like solid links with pivots at the ends rather than a continuous, flexible structure. It was written up a year or two back in Racecar Engineering magazine.

Fun stuff.