Sports driving glossary: g-force - sports cars
Sports driving glossary: g-force - sports cars
When it comes to racing cars (or sports cars), we often hear about "overdrive" force, but what exactly?
You need to start with a physics lesson. There force gin the classical sense acceleration experienced by a body when it is left to move in free fall in a gravitational field. If you, for example, throw yourself off a balcony (which I do not recommend), you will experience a strong gravitational acceleration, in fact a downward force g. Simple, isn't it?
Overload is measured in meters per second squared and varies depending on where you are on our planet. However, g is on average equivalent to 9,80665 m / s².
Overload applied to cars
What does all this have to do with it sports cars? Quite a lot, actually: each lateral and longitudinal acceleration, in a car, is equivalent to a side ejection g.
The lateral ig calculation is important for engineers and is used to understand whether a vehicle has high grip or not. The higher the cornering grip, the higher the lateral ig will be. The stronger the braking and acceleration, the higher the longitudinal values.
How is overload determined? Via an accelerometer located inside the vehicle. The measurement is usually taken during long corners while driving, when it gradually accelerates to the maximum grip limit (maximum overload force) until a loss of grip is achieved.
A sports car with very high performance reaches up to 1,3-1,4 g sideways, karting gets to me easily 3,5 g as well as racing cars.
Le Modern Formula 1 they are so fast and have such good grip that they can reach and even exceed 5 g in the lateral direction, as well as peaks of 6,7 g when braking (as in the case of the Monza parabolic curve).
Physical stress
When the equivalent 1 g side this means outward thrust is equivalent to the force of gravity that pulls us down. This means that when we drive complex cars (for example, develop them), our body is subjected to very serious stress.
Is all this bad for our body?
Actually no: in our body "suffers" more positive and negative overloads, or those that go from top to bottom, or worse, from bottom to top. This is because the blood moves from head to toe, which can even cause fainting.
On the other hand, transverse and longitudinal g-forces from this point of view have a less strong effect (in other words, the blood remains in the head).
