Whoopsy:
reginos:
 

Thank you very much for replying and clarifying.

The carbon tub has proved a lifesaver in this case. Can we guess how a sports car with a conventional  structure would have fared under similar circumstances?

 

 

Well modern cars do have a safety standard they needed to built to, so in theory a unibody car shouldn't be any worse.

In this particular case, while he wasn't speeding, luck was still on his side. he did hit the semi, but didn't go under it, that would have been bad. 

Majority of the impact was done on the front end, strongest part of any car. The rollover did impacted the roof but the windshield frame withstood those and windshield frames are also another strong part of a modern car.

Unlike metals, carbon structure do not bend, either they stay intact or they just shattered. If I remembered correctly what I was told when I visited McLaren factory, the explanation was that in a metal structure, say a unibody car, impact energy is absorbed in the localized region where the impact is, and the metal eventually deformed to absorb the energy and then break. In a carbon tub, and because of the molecular structure, the impact energy is not absorb in the localized region, but spread all over the structure, like a giant sponge. But if the energy is big enough to saturate the whole structure, the impact zone will shatter as the molecular bond is broken. Metal structure do that too but the energy transmission and absorption rate is much lower. 

In this particular case, the speed involved isn't that great, so the energy involved probably won't bend up a metal body car that much and the passenger cell would still stay intact. 

In a theoretical case where higher speed is involved, the carbon tub will probably still stay intact, but a metal one will likely suffer more, the windshield frame perhaps will collapse down, the front end of the passenger cell will likely would have crumble in, deforming the door frame enough that the door won't open. 

All these very fast cars have good chances of crashing at 250+ km/h. At such speeds no one comes out alive, I'm afraid.

 


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"Porsche....and Nothing else matters"