Mercedes-Benz F-400 Carving

Tokyo Motor Show 2001:

DaimlerChrysler presents F 400 Carving research vehicle with dynamic chassis technology

· Concept study with new systems for even more active safety

· Outer wheels that tilt by up to 20 degrees when cornering

· Active wheel camber control enhances directional stability

· Less risk of skidding and shorter emergency stopping distance

· Forward-looking technology with real design appeal

· Asian premiere of the new SL-Class and the facelifted M-Class

Tokyo -- DaimlerChrysler is exhibiting a special concept study at the 35th Tokyo Motor Show: the F 400 Carving is a research vehicle packed with dynamic systems designed to give the cars of tomorrow and beyond substantially enhanced active safety, dynamic handling control and driving pleasure.

The main attraction in the F 400 Carving is a new system that varies the camber angle on the outer wheels between 0 and 20 degrees, depending on the road situa-tion. Used in conjunction with newly-developed tyres, it provides 30 percent more lateral stability than a conventional system with a fixed camber setting and standard tyres. This considerably enhances active safety, since better lateral stability equals improved road adhesion and greater cornering stability.

Active camber control boosts the research vehicle's maximum lateral acceleration to 1.28 g, meaning that the concept study outperforms current sports cars by some 28 percent.

The active camber control in the F 400 Carving paves the way for an equally new asymmetrical-tread tyre concept. When the two-seater car is cornering, the outer wheels tilt inwards, leaving only the inner area of these tyres in contact with the road. This area of the tread is slightly rounded off. Meanwhile both the tread pattern and the rubber blend have been specially selected to ensure highly dynamic and extremely safe cornering. When driving straight ahead, however, it is the outer areas of the tyres that are in contact with the road. These areas have a tried-and-tested car tread pattern, offering excellent high-speed and low-noise performance. Two different concepts therefore come to fruition in a single tyre, thanks to active camber control.

The research vehicle's "Carving" epithet symbolises the new technology, evoking images of the high-speed winter sport in which adepts perform sharp turns on a specially-shaped high-grip ski.

Less risk of skidding and shorter emergency stopping distance

The F 400 Carving is something of a mobile research laboratory for the Stutt-gart-based automotive engineers. They will be using it to investigate the undoubted further potential of this new chassis technology: besides offering excellent direc-tional stability during cornering, the new technology ensures a much higher level of active safety in the event of an emergency. By way of example, if there is a risk of skidding, the wheel camber is increased by an appropriate degree. The resultant gain in lateral stability significantly enhances the effect of ESP®, the Electronic Stability Program. If the research car needs to be braked in an emergency, all four of its wheels can be tilted in next to no time, thus shortening the stopping distance from 100 km/h by a good five metres.

Electronic steering, active hydropneumatic system and light from glass fibres

In addition to active camber control, the F 400 Carving research car is fitted with other forward-looking steering and chassis systems, including a steer-by-wire system. Sensors pick up the driver’s steering inputs and send this information to two microcomputers which, in turn, control an electrically driven steering gear. The DaimlerChrysler engineers also charted new territory when it came to the suspension tuning, and introduced a first: an active hydropneumatic system that optimises the suspension and shock absorption in line with the changing situation on the road, all at lightning speed.

The F 400 Carving is also the showcase for a totally new form of lighting technology developed by the Stuttgart-based researchers: fibre-optic lines are used to transmit light from xenon lamps beneath the bonnet to the main headlamps. This technology stands out by virtue of its high performance and extremely space-saving design. Additional headlamps positioned on the sides also come on when the car is cornering.

Exciting design symbolising innovation and emotion

The F 400 Carving is an exciting and harmonious blend of technology and design. The shape of the sports car – notably its distinctive wing profiles – provides the necessary room for the wheels to move when the active camber control is at work during cornering and, at the same time, emphasises the youthful and highly-adventurous nature of this concept study. In order to reflect the research car's high-quality driving dynamics, the designers opted for a speedster concept – incorporating an extended bonnet, a windscreen with an extremely sharp rake, a short tail end and an interior tailor-made for two.

SOURCE: Mercedes-Benz

The Technology of the F 400 Carving

· Mobile research laboratory with leading-edge technology

· Computers control the wheel camber angle in accordance with the road situation

· Up to 30 percent better lateral stability when cornering

· Tires with asymmetrical tread pattern and two friction zones

· New drive-by-wire system for steering and braking

· Hydropneumatic active suspension and damping system

· Carbon fiber body, ceramic composite brakes

· New headlamp system with fiber-optic technology

The latest research car gives us an insight into the future: the F 400 Carving follows in the tracks of other vehicle studies such as the F 200 Imagination and F 300 Life-Jet, which showcased new steering and chassis concepts in 1996 and 1997 respectively: "drive-by-wire" and "active roll control" were just two of the concepts central to these automotive research projects. The research engineers and scientists at DaimlerChrysler have perfected these ideas in the F 400 Carving and are proud to unveil an entirely new system which further enhances active safety and dynamic handling and gives an even more exhilarating driving experience.

20-degree wheel camber for safe and reliable cornering

The "Carving" epithet already hints at the capabilities of the chassis tech-nology in this research vehicle. Each time the car enters a corner or bend, two of its wheels tilt inwards, riding on a tire tread that has been specially optimized for cornering and has a high friction coefficient for optimum directional stability and road adhesion. The dynamics are reminiscent of the movements performed by alpine skiers using carving skis.

The computer-controlled system in the F 400 Carving varies the camber angle on the outer wheels by between 0 and 20 degrees when the car is cornering. The inner wheels and the vehicle body remain in their normal positions.

"Active camber control" is the culmination of a research project spanning several years. It all began with computer simulations and bench tests. But now the time has come for research out on the road.

The F 400 Carving is something of a mobile research laboratory for the Stuttgart-based automotive engineers. They aim to use the open-top two-seater to further research the potential of novel chassis systems and to open up new avenues in chassis technology for the passenger cars of the future. Initial test drives and measurements have delivered extremely en-couraging results.

Compared to a modern car chassis, the active camber control in the F 400 Carving enables up to 30 percent more lateral stability and 15 percent more longitudinal forces. The numbers back up these claims: whilst the maximum lateral force on the wheel is usually about 6200 Newtons when the camber is zero degrees, this figure rises to 6900 Newtons when there is a negative camber of 10 degrees and as high as 7800 Newtons when the negative camber is 20 degrees.

Thanks to the high level of lateral stability on the outer wheels during cor-nering, lateral acceleration in the F 400 Carving is up to 28 percent higher than in sports cars that rely on conventional chassis technology. When the outer wheels of the F 400 Carving are tilted inwards by 20 degrees during cornering, the two-seater achieves a maximum lateral acceleration of 1.28 g.

This impressive figure is not just an indication of high cornering dynamics and sporting agility, it also signals a substantial improvement in active safety, particularly in emergency situations such as cornering at (excessive) speed or sudden obstacle-avoidance maneuvers. The research car remains more directionally stable than a car equipped with conventional chassis technology. What's more, it does so for longer and at a higher speed.

Tires: the concept of asymmetry

The tires are a major contributing factor to these results: active camber control enables a totally new concept that, for the first time and without compromise, combines the benefits of a passenger car tire with those of a motorcycle tire. Asymmetry is the principle behind this new tire technology, jointly developed by engineers from DaimlerChrysler and Pirelli: the tread pattern, tread blend and contour are all asymmetrical.

The most remarkable feature on the inside of the tire is the rounded-off tread which ensures superlative handling when cornering. The outer shoulder of the tire has a tried-and-tested car tread pattern, offering excellent straight-line stability and low road noise. For the first time, the experts have succeeded in harnessing the benefits of an established physical theory, according to which, at large camber angles, a tire with a curved tread can transmit greater lateral forces than conventional tires. The asymmetrical tread is made possible by the fact that the insides of the tires only come into contact with the road when the active camber control tilts the outer wheels inwards during cornering. This leaves the engineers one clear objective to focus on when harmonizing and optimizing the inner shoulders of the tires: superlative cornering safety.

Rubber blend: tire tread with different friction zones

The rubber blend used for the F 400 tires plays an equally important role, since the softer inner-tread zones enable even greater transmission of the forces – i.e. even better road adhesion – when cornering. These "high-friction compounds" are not usually suitable for car tires as the soft rubber blend is more susceptible to wear than the conventional rubber compounds used. Therefore the new tire would not normally achieve the mileage of which today's tires are capable.

The active camber control in the F 400 Carving makes up for this short-coming: thanks to this innovative technology, the softer insides of the tires only come into contact with the tarmac when the car is cornering and so do not wear as quickly. In contrast, the rubber compound the experts developed for the outside of the tire is much harder, having been optimized with regard to longevity, straight-line stability and road roar.

In other words, thanks to its asymmetrical contour and special rubber blend, the newly developed tire provides the answer to a previously unresolved conflict of aims: maximum cornering safety and superlative driving dy-namics on the one hand; high mileage and superb straight-line stability on the other. For the first time, therefore, two different concepts come to fruition in a single tire, thanks to active camber control.

Tire size: two diameters on one rim

Tires need a sufficiently large contact patch in order to provide a high level of lateral stability when cornering, however. And this presents a problem: the greater the wheel camber, the smaller is the active contact patch, at least as far as standard configurations are concerned. Recognizing this one disadvantage of the chassis technology used in the F 400 Carving, the DaimlerChrysler engineers developed a new type of wheel with two different diameters: 17 inches on the inside – the part of the wheel that is in contact with the road when cornering – and 19 inches on the outside. On the one hand, this ensures that the research car only runs on the non-curved section of the tire when driving straight ahead whilst, on the other hand, the smaller inner diameter provides the largest possible contact patch when the car is cornering.

In technically terms, the tire size is 255/35 R 19 tires on the outer shoulder and 255/45 R 17 on the inner side.

Highly-promising research

Active computer-controlled camber adjustment and asymmetrical tires have brought the DaimlerChrysler engineers a major step closer to achieving one of their primary objectives: enhancing already exemplary levels of active safety and driving dynamics for the benefit of future models. But this is just the beginning of what promises to be an extremely fruitful research project: alongside greater lateral acceleration and exemplary cornering stability, this innovative technology provides a whole host of other on-road benefits:

· If there is a risk of skidding, due to understeer or oversteer, the system briefly tilts one or more of the wheels by a precisely calculated amount, thus boosting the lateral forces and stabilizing the car. This means active camber control has the potential to enhance the effect of ESP®. Coupled with electronically controlled steering, which allows automatic steering correction, this can greatly reduce the risk of skidding.

· In the event of emergency braking, all four wheels on the research car tilt at lightning speed, leaving only the insides of the tires – with fric-tion-optimized rubber-compound tread – in contact with the road. This reduces the stopping distance from 100 km/h by a good five meters.

· If there is a risk of aquaplaning, the system is capable of optimizing the tire contact patch by an appropriate amount. A wheel camber of just five degrees is enough to achieve the desired effect: a substantial reduction in the risk of aquaplaning. A new breed of sensor system, currently under development at DaimlerChrysler, detects the water layer on the road surface and sends the measured values to the ECU at the heart of the active camber control, enabling the system to automatically adjust the tilt of the wheels to suit the road conditions.

· Asymmetrical tires would also prove beneficial in winter as the special rubber blend and tread pattern combine to provide extremely high trac-tion as well as short stopping distances and superlative directional sta-bility. To ensure safe driving on snow or ice, the driver can tilt the wheels at the push of a button, thus enabling the car to run solely on the insides of the tires, for better road adhesion.

Tilting hub carriers with hydraulic cylinders

Active computer-controlled camber adjustment is possible thanks to two-piece hub carriers and a powerful hydraulic system. Each hub carrier consists of one tilting section and one rigid section: the wheel locating components of a double-wishbone suspension system are attached to the rigid inside sections whilst the wheel bearings and the brake caliper linkages are located on the tilting outside sections. During cornering, piston rods in dual hydraulic cylinders press against the tilting hub-carrier sections on the outer wheels, causing them to tilt outwards at the bottom. In this way, the wheel camber can be varied between 0 and 20 degrees, depending on the road situation.

The driven rear axle on the F 400 Carving is designed in much the same way as the front axle, the variable-length axle shafts being the only major dif-ference.

At the heart of the hydraulic system is an axial piston pump with a working pressure of up to 200 bar. Servo valves on the wheels' dual cylinders regulate the oil flow to control the degree of cylinder retraction and extension.

If the driver adopts a dynamic driving style, rapid cylinder movement is required and in this case the pump receives assistance from a hydraulic pressure reservoir. A limp-home function is also provided: special shut-off valves interrupt the oil flow to the hydraulic cylinders and use the pressure available in the system to set the wheel camber angle to zero degrees.

Steer-by-wire and brake-by-wire

Active camber control, as featured in the F 400 Carving, represents a major step forward in chassis development for future car models. Even in its own right. But the Stuttgart-based engineers are taking things a step further, marrying this technology to a whole host of other, equally pioneering sys-tems. The key to it all is drive-by-wire. The F 400 dispenses with mechanical connecting components such as the steering column, with all the shafts and joints that go with it, and the linkage between brake pedal and brake booster. In their place are wires which transmit the driver's steering or braking inputs by purely electronic means.

· Steering: The electronic steering wheel is equipped with two inductive angle sensors that pick up each movement of the steering wheel, convert the measured angle into an electrical pulse and transmit the signal to the research car's microcomputers via data line. The computers evaluate these and other current sensor signals, using the data to specify setpoints for the front axle steering angle. In critical situations, the drive-by-wire system can also override the driver's steering inputs, to keep the car safely on an even keel. Two electric motors, which are directly connected to the rack-and-pinion steering, move the wheels of the F 400 Carving. This is why the automotive researchers refer to an "electric rack" – a new feature which they developed together with the steering experts from Mercedes-Benz Lenkungen GmbH. Each electric motor generates half of the steering torque. In the event of a malfunction, one of the motors alone can assume total responsibility for the steering functions. This is therefore a redundant system, designed to provide maximum functional reliability. Even the research car's power supply is based on a dual-system concept: besides a standard (12-volt) on-board power supply, the F 400 Carving also has two 42-volt systems which are primarily used for the electronic steering.

· Brakes: Brake-by-wire is already very much a reality at Mercedes-Benz. The Sensotronic Brake Control (SBC) high-pressure brake works on the following principle. When the brake pedal is depressed, an electrical signal is produced which is forwarded to a microcomputer. A sophisticated sensor system ensures that the microcomputer receives a continuous feed of data about the car’s driving dynamics. The electronic system can therefore calculate and modulate the brake pressure for each wheel, according to the situation in hand. The end result is significantly enhanced braking safety when cornering.

Alongside Sensotronic Brake Control, the braking system in the F 400 Carving contains a further technical highlight that really sets it apart: the brake discs (330 millimeters in diameter) are made of car-bon-fiber-reinforced ceramic, a high-tech material that is capable of with-standing extreme temperatures of between 1400 and 1600 degrees Celsius. It is also around a third lighter than cast iron.

Suspension and damping: next-generation ABC

The new active hydropneumatic (AHP) suspension system also sees the research engineers entering uncharted territory: the F 400 Carving is being used to test this possible alternative to future generations of the active sus-pension system which is currently fitted as standard in the Mercedes

S-Class, CL-Class and SL-Class models.

In contrast to the today's Active Body Control (ABC) system, in which active control of the forces between the vehicle body and the wheel is performed by adjusting the spring action, the active hydropneumatic system influences both the suspension and the damping, adapting them at lightning speed to the situation in hand. The benefits of this system include an even higher level of active safety and enhanced ride comfort.

Engine and transmission: Mercedes technology with new detail solutions

Beneath the engine hood of the F 400 Carving is a state-of-the-art 3.2-liter V6 powerplant, a tried-and-tested unit installed in several other Mercedes model series. This six-cylinder engine differs from the standard production version in just one respect: the research engineers have equipped it with a dry sump lubrication system which ensures a constant supply of oil to the powerplant, even when lateral acceleration is extremely high.

The sequential gearbox in the research car is also a standard Mercedes-Benz production model. Only the SEQUENTRONIC controls are different: in the F 400 Carving, the driver changes gear in racing-car style – with selector buttons on the steering wheel.

Xenon light from fiber optics

Equally new is the headlamp system of the F 400 Carving. For the first time, DaimlerChrysler is using state-of-the-art fiber-optic technology to transmit the light produced by the xenon lamps. These optical-fiber bundles, made up of thousands of individual glass-fiber strands, enable physical separation of the light source and the headlamps - an advantage that primarily benefits the sports car's front-end design, since the headlamps only take up a very small amount of space. This therefore allows an extremely flat and low-slung front.

The light for main and dipped beam is generated in two cylindrical casings beneath the engine hood. Each contains a xenon lamp, and the light given off by these lamps is concentrated by elliptic reflectors. The reflector focal points reflect the light into the fiber-optic lines which, in turn, ensure loss-free transmission of the light to the headlamps. Special lens systems in the headlamps diffuse the light to illuminate the road. In addition, the F 400 Carving has two side-mounted lights for cornering. These fixed-position halogen lamps come on when a certain steering angle is reached. They can also be activated by a button, for use as fog lamps.

A space-saving design is also the hallmark of the indicators: powerful LEDs generate the light which is then dispersed by means of prism lenses.

Vehicle body: lightweight carbon fiber

The open-top two-seater's body is made from carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP). Already tried and tested in the world of Formula One motor racing, its chief properties are minimum weight and maximum strength. It weighs in at about 60 percent less than steel, making the body of the research car 100 kilograms lighter. The DaimlerChrysler engineers use an intelligent three-material mix for the F 400 Carving chassis: steel, aluminum and carbon fiber (CFRP).

SOURCE: Mercedes-Benz

Engine & performance:

Position: front

Type: V6

Capacity: 3199 cc

Power: 218 hp

Torque: 310 Nm

Top speed: 6,9 s

0-100 km/h: 241 km/h

Tyres:

Front: 255/35 R19

Rear: 255/35 R17