Well their business culture will no doubt be influenced by the place they are from, especially in the beggining, ut nowdays i think they know that if they had come to motogp with a aluminium frame and done things 'normaly' they'd just be trying to catch up on years of knowledge and experience their competitors have over them. If they don't innovate they won't win.
Estoril testing
- Thread starter hawkdriver
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Well their business culture will no doubt be influenced by the place they are from, especially in the beggining, ut nowdays i think they know that if they had come to motogp with a aluminium frame and done things 'normaly' they'd just be trying to catch up on years of knowledge and experience their competitors have over them. If they don't innovate they won't win.
Joined Mar 2005
7K Posts | 20+
Woody Creek
My technical knowledge is admittedly not the best, but doesn't carbon fiber offer them more flexibility in changes they can make to the chassis? For example, they can make subtle changes to the carbon fiber or the manner in which it's produced for changes in outcome. Whereas the aluminum is going to be largely the same until you get into the welding and manufacturing process. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall that was Ducati's reasoning for going carbon fiber.
That was my understanding too, they said that a carbon chassis would allow them to more easily make measured and predictable alterations to stiffness. But then perhaps the material is not Ducati's problem at all, and the engine configuration and subsequent geometry are actually causing the problems.
Joined Oct 2007
4K Posts | 744+
Tuscany, Italy
According to Furusawa, who is an authority on the subject of materials and their behavior under stress, a carbon fiber chassis is ideal for a F1 car that has just to be as stiff and light as possible, but is not suitable for a motorcycle frame that has to be flexible in a smooth and controlled way at the high lean angles.CF's degree of flex is controllable, it seems, but the flex action (especially when the material recovers the original shape) may not be smooth enough, in teh sense that it can be too snappy -- leaving alone the fact that the biggest part of the Ducati 'chassis', the fully stressed engine, doesn't flex at all. Was Furusawa referring to CF when he said that Ducati 'are doing something wrong'? Or to the 90° L engine architecture, that makes the bike longer? Who knows.
Joined Mar 2005
7K Posts | 20+
Woody Creek
According to Furusawa, who is an authority on the subject of materials and their behavior under stress, a carbon fiber chassis is ideal for a F1 car that has just to be as stiff and light as possible, but is not suitable for a motorcycle frame that has to be flexible in a smooth and controlled way at the high lean angles.CF's degree of flex is controllable, it seems, but the flex action (especially when the material recovers the original shape) may not be smooth enough, in teh sense that it can be too snappy -- leaving alone the fact that the biggest part of the Ducati 'chassis', the fully stressed engine, doesn't flex at all. Was Furusawa referring to CF when he said that Ducati 'are doing something wrong'? Or to the 90° L engine architecture, that makes the bike longer? Who knows.
Thanks for that.
Yes, but they didn't have many tests to decide mid-season in 2008 to decide to go the carbon fibre route. My current conjecture is that they built something in aluminium, replicated the characteristics in carbon fibre, saw the chassis perform similarly and said let's go carbon fibre because of supposed theoretical advantages. I don't think there was actually too much wrong with the original 2009 carbon fibre chassis bike with the screamer engine; stoner actually said this and his form when healthy late in the 2009 season would seem to provide supportive evidence. Whatever changes they made for the 2010 bike, obviously the big bang engine but whatever else, seemed to have unpredictable effects on the handling and stability of the bike.
Whilst still annoyed with valentino for taking stoner out at jerez I give him and jb considerable kudos for working out how to tweak carbon fibre if they have done so. I still suspect that KISS applies and having an infinitely adjustable chassis is not necessarily an advantage, particularly given that race week-end new carbon-fibre chassis baking does not as yet appear feasible. Perhaps they are looking at having saturday night special chassis in future like the sns michelin tyres.
I doubt they have become experts in carbon fibre in less than 6 mths however as Tom says in the below post they have probably provide feedback on geometry and flex (which I am sure is measurable) and how the Ducati's flex compares to that of the Yamaha. The engineers and carbon fibre experts have then manufactured a chassis that falls into those parameters.
I agree with you here Tom. It makes sense when you stack it up against Stoner's and Hayden's feedback that some changes do nothing and others do too much. If the bike is outside the window in geometry and engine configuration then I suspect you could expect this type of result.
I wonder what kind of outside they help they have to develop the carbon chassis. I've been doing some reading on the advantages of an inverted swingarm after seeing their last test and besides the obvious lowering of center of gravity, it's supposedly more stable laterally, and reduces wheel hop. I wonder if we get to see one on the Duc this year.
Joined Apr 2011
636 Posts | 26+
Gold Coast
I am just conjecturing as I said, but trying to come up with a global explanation, given that the 2009 ducati with a carbon fibre integrated engine chassis looked a pretty good bike, as stoner consistently maintained, repeatedly saying that he rather than the bike was the problem when he wasn't doing so well in the early part of the season. He didn't seem to have any front end problems with this bike, and it looked the fastest bike at least in his hands at the end of the season.
My speculation is that they developed the original 2009 bike in aluminium, built or got ferrari or whoever to build a carbon fibre chassis which matched the characteristics of the aluminium chassis, then said great, they perform similarly. Whatever they did for the 2010 bike, which obviously involved going to the bigbang engine but may also have involved geometry changes, didn't work for whatever reason.
I agree with tom that ducati need to innovate to compete, but the innovations need to be ones that work, and as I also said radical changes like the chassis change would now seem harder to implement with the limited testing by the real race riders available. I have yet to see anything convincing as to why a carbon fibre chassis should be an advantage in a race bike (as opposed to a race car) apart from the ability to change things rapidly, but as I have been arguing this may be a mixed blessing. I have seen arguments from people like furosawa, as j4rno has re-posted, that there are reasons why the carbon fibre approach won't work.
Michael don't forget that Stoner does not like to hang .... on his employer so in 2009 he always put the blame on himself rather than publicly say the bike was no good. The results in 2009 were still the same for all the other Ducati riders which was bad and this continued through 2010 and so far in 2011. So I would suggest that in 2009 the bike was still no good. In 2010, Stoner still did not come out and say that the Ducati was bad but rather the new 2010 Ohlins were no good. I guess we get used to Stoner not being very politically correct and in the midst of that forget that he is always respectful of his employer to the extent of maintaining a great relationship up to and after his departure.
Joined Oct 2007
4K Posts | 744+
Tuscany, Italy
The mini-frame connecting the cylinder heads to the steering head was in steel trellis before, not in aluminum. Only the swingarm was aluminum. They first changed the front frame to CF, then the swingarm as well. From what I saw of the 2012 prototype, the new inverted swingarm looks like aluminum though.
But why? After they had 2 very successful seasons, what made them change the front frame and swing arm to CF? Did they find the Al and Steel frames/swing arm anyway limiting?
You seem to be forgetting Stoner calling his old employer two faced after he left. Doesn't seem too respectful to me (and yes I believe he was entitled to say it).
Joined Oct 2007
4K Posts | 744+
Tuscany, Italy
Who knows? Maybe they were trying to give an answer to requests coming from the riders -- remember that Stoner likes the bike very stiff, and nothing is stiffer than CF. Certainly the change from the steel-trellis frame and from the screamer engine to CF and to big-bang were more substantial than any of the changes that are under way now. Ducati are not yet 'moving heaven and earth' although I reckon they are ready to do that if the current design proves to be a dead end. They are ready to do whatever it takes, yes, -- not "for Rossi", but for the sake of their 2012 bike that will be the Ducati GP platform for the next decade. They have to get it right.
The problem with the steel trellis frame (and in fact, Ducati's biggest problem in MotoGP) is their quality control. And the fact it would be a good idea if they actually had some. Two nominally identical frames, could differ in stiffness by as much as 15%. That was one reason for going to CF, as CF is much easier to get consistency from, but even then, Stoner said that he would prefer to use just one bike, as the second bike never felt the same, even when using an identical setup.
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Thanks Kropo. But weren't they solving the problem then? If they were to abandon the Steel Trellis frame, why didn't they go along with Japs by using aluminium alloy frame(?) instead of treading the uncharted water
Because CF is easier to manage than aluminium, and create reproducible results. They would have ended up with a similar problem. But CF is also preferred because it is much easier to control stiffness than aluminium, you can create a more precise set of stiffnesses than with ally. Its disadvantage is hysteresis, it snaps back into position, rather than rebounding smoothly like a metal, making it very harsh.
Joined Mar 2011
319 Posts | 0+
London
Yup they want to make it rideable, rather than a bike that can be thrashed around if the perfect setup is found. I think the heavier crankshaft engine will make a difference, but I reckon it'll be next year at the earliest until Ducati have a world-class chassis design.
Joined Oct 2007
4K Posts | 744+
Tuscany, Italy
Then the only explanation is that Ducati have been incredibly lucky in 2007 and 2008, their most successful years, using those unreliable parts...? For a factory that doesn't know how to do quality control, they should have had more DNFs than others... but actually the Ducatis have not experienced more technical problems than the Japanese bikes, on average (think of Yamaha in 2007...) and Suzuki have fared much worse than them.
Stoner has become a legend at Ducati, and not only for his fantastic speed that made those successes possible.
At the end of last year, Preziosi said that he loved Stoner and was going to miss him, although at times he had felt like strangling him with his own hands... The story of the two identical bikes with identical setups feeling irrimediably different, can be read in more than one way.
