- [Narrator] It's the case that's been known as Spygate. The World Motor Sport Council
then found McLaren guilty of unauthorized possession
of Ferrari information. - In 2007, McLaren was
fined a $100 million dollars for stealing engineering
documents from Ferrari. To this day, (cashier dings)
it's the largest fine in the history of sports. However, that same year, Renault was caught stealing documents from McLaren containing,
among other secrets, the diagrams for a device
called the J-damper. So what was Renault's fine for stealing? (dramatic music) Zero. Zero dollars for the same crime. What? According to the FIA, the engineers at Renault had certain fundamental misunderstandings about the operation of
the J-damper system. And since Renault's actions based on that misunderstanding had no effect on the F1 Championship, they didn't merit any punishment. It's like stealing the
teachers the answer key, but then not understanding the key and answering everything wrong anyways. Like yeah, you cheated,
but you cheated so bad we're not gonna punish you. Once the cat was (cat screeches)
out of the bag on this mystery suspension
device, almost every team in F1 started using it. But after 17 years, the J-damper
has been banned for 2022. But what is a J-damper? How does it work? And why is F1 banning it? Today on B2B, we're gonna find out. Let's go. (upbeat music) (neon lights buzzing) Big thanks to Keeps for
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Before we get into the J-damper, let's cover the basics of a
traditional suspension setup. First, you got your springs. The springs absorb energy
from a bump, pothole, or possum in the road, and
then release that energy so it can return back to center. That's why your car returns
back to its normal ride height after it hits a bump. The problem with springs on their own is that they oscillate. Once a force is applied to the spring, it'll continue bouncing up and down. We can show you that
using a graph like this. The oscillations will eventually slow down and get back to zero, but it
takes a long time to settle. You don't wanna hit a bump
and they keep bouncing around in your car for
the next 30 seconds. So we need to dampen those oscillations. One way is by dissipating
the energy causing the oscillations. The obvious example of this type of damper is a shock absorber. A typical shock absorber consists
of a fluid-filled chamber and a valve piston that
pushes through that fluid. The shock and spring are linked so when the spring compresses, so does the shock. With every expansion and
compression of the shock absorber, that piston pushing through
the fluid converts some of that system's kinetic
energy into heat energy. So instead of spending time bouncing up and down on oscillating springs, the shock absorbers ensure
that your car gets back to its steady state quickly. But dissipating energy isn't the only way that a damper can reduce an oscillation. What if, instead of just
trying to dissipate the energy, we actually use that energy against the spring's oscillation. That is where the J-damper comes in. J-damper is just the
code name McLaren used to keep the device secret. It's technically referred
to as an inerter. It's really hard to not
accidentally say inverter, but that's what the inventor named it so that's what I'll call it. When you invent cool things, you get to name it whatever you want. An inerter can take a few different forms, but in this case, it
consists of a threaded rod and a flywheel. As a force is applied to one end, the rod pushes up through the flywheel, causing it to spin, This converts the linear
energy into rotational energy. Once the force is no longer applied, the momentum of the
flywheel is returned back into the rod, making it want to continue in that same direction
that the force was applied. If we apply force in
the opposite direction, the same thing happens with the flywheel spinning the other way. It's similar to those toy
cars with the flywheels. You turn that linear energy
into rotational energy, and then you use all that stored up energy to keep the
car moving on its own. So, when a force is applied to a spring, it momentarily stores that energy, then releases it back in
the opposite direction of the initial force. When a force is applied
to a shock absorber, it removes that energy from the system by converting it into heat. And when a force is applied
to an inerter or a J-damper, it momentarily stores that
energy in the flywheel, then releases it back
into the threaded shaft in the same direction
as the initial force. The important thing to notice
here is that the spring and the inerter both
store and release energy, but they release energy
in opposite directions. So if we an inerter into the system and it's properly tuned to the spring and expected forces, we can use this opposing energy to dampen the spring further. Another way to picture
this is by looking back at those oscillation graphs from before. Any wave can be diminished by producing destructive interference, which is making another way that conflicts with the original wave. An interfering wave is one which ideally has a similar amplitude, but which is out of phase, meaning it crosses the center line at a different time or moving
in the opposite direction. If we plot the force of the
inerter acting on the spring, we end up with a wave like this. Some dampening does occur
due to the initial startup with getting that flywheel spinning, but the big dampening comes
in with what happens next, with the interference produced
when the spring rebounds. For the spring to extend, it has to overcome the stored energy in the spinning flywheel to slow it down and reverse its direction. In other words, the spring has to fight the
flywheel's rotational inertia, hence the name inerter. Because the flywheel is
resisting the spring's extension, the rotational energy in the flywheel is out of phase with the
energy in the spring. So as the spring extends
and compresses repeatedly, that oscillation continues feeding energy into the flywheel, and in turn feeds that
energy back out of phase, interfering with and
dampening the oscillations of that spring. This out of phase wave ends up canceling out the way wave from the
spring's natural frequency. This, this may well be
the most complicated B2B we've ever made. So, are inerters better dampers than shock absorbers? In theory, yes. Instead of simply dissipating the energy from oscillation, an inerter turns that
energy back onto itself and should be able to fully eliminate
oscillations more quickly than an energy dissipating
damper like a shock. That sounds great, right?
- [Crowd] Yeah! - Well, yeah, but there are
also a couple of problems. One, when you wanna get rid of those high amplitude oscillations, you need a flywheel
that has a lot of mass. Guys in F1, they don't like heavy stuff. Don't tell your mom.
(audio distorts) So say you don't wanna make it heavier, well, how about you
increase the diameter of it? You put the mass further away
from the center of rotation. Well, now you have a large object that you need to try to
fit into your F1 car. That's kind of tough to do. There's not a lot of
space you can work with. Because F1 parts need
to be light and compact, the dampers of choice are not inerters. They're the energy
dissipating shock absorbers that use gas and oil to turn
oscillations of the springs, technically torsion bars in F1, into heat. But F1 is all about
squeezing every last bit of performance out of
the technology available. And even though the inerter
couldn't be used in conjunction with the stiff torsion bars
for the primary suspension, there was a smaller spring light component whose oscillation needed to be dealt with, the tires. Undamped tire oscillations
have a huge impact on mechanical grip. And the only way to prevent
the tires' oscillations from upsetting the grip
and balance of the car is to use a mechanical
device like a J-damper. Ordinary suspension components
like shock absorbers struggle to combat such small vibrations. Small movements of a shock's piston, it can't build the pressure
needed to generate heat and dissipate energy. And shocks compress and extend
relatively slowly compared to in an inerter. But even small, low amplitude, or rapid oscillations will
rotate an inerter's flywheel, putting the energy into it that can be fed back to
damp that oscillation. When used in combination with springs and traditional shock absorbers, inerters provide a high
level of dampening control over specific oscillations. And that's why nearly
every F1 team uses them. So why are J-dampers
being banned for 2022? Well, it's Formula 1 where the answer is often the same. Money. (upbeat music) - [Narrator] A bunch of wine cold. - Mercedes has won the
Constructors' Championship for seven years in a row, and they spend more money
than any other team, reportedly as much as four
times what Williams spends. To combat that inequality and make a more interesting series, the FIA is instituting a spending cap. To do that, they have to
mandate that cars get simpler. Certain parts are being eliminated and the inerter is one of them. As part of that simplification, the FIA also wants the
technology of F1 cars to be more like road cars. And they say things like, "Inerters simply have no
relevance to ordinary cars." But it's not all bad news because the primary role of inerters is to damp oscillation
specifically from the tires, and those occur predominantly
in the tire sidewalls. Well, beginning in 2022, F1 will be moving from a
13" wheel to an 18" wheel, meaning tire sidewalls will
be much shorter and stiffer, and less prone to oscillations. With that difference, the
once game-changing inerter may not be necessary after all. And if you really wanna find out for yourself what all this
inerter stuff is about, Cambridge University and Malcolm Smith, the inventor of their inerter, has licensed the technology to Penske who will happily sell
you one of these bad boys for a low price of $18,000. The B2B motto, "Cool things cost money, but you don't need money
to be a cool thing." Put that on a t-shirt
and send it to your mom. Thank you guys so much for
watching this episode of B2B. Follow us here at Donut
on Instagram @DonutMedia. Follow me @JeremiahBurton. Till next week, bye for now. ♪ Love is love, adidodos ♪
