Quote:
Originally Posted by Stohlen
No, its the fact that the plate is on the other side that makes all the difference. A force able to mushroom the tower would just push the bar up with it, and deform in a slightly different manner. A strut bar isn't going to have nearly the same affect that those plates would.
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This is discussed at length, on many forums.
While it's not as effective as a plate on the bottom, it certainly adds additional resistance to mushrooming. It's still bolted down, and will work to transfer some additional load around to other portions of the strut tower. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that a plate bolted to the top of the tower would offer structural benefits.
No one said it was as good of a solution, but contrary to your initial statement, it certainly helps. Without question. Draw a free body diagram of it. Keeping in mind the strut tower is not uniformly strong, thus, you typically see the mushrooming around one or two of the bolts, or in certain portions of the tower, rather than all the way around, in a uniform fashion. Thus, the top mounted ring would clerly work to transfer at least some additional load to the non-deforming portions of the tower.
Just for clarification, the bar in the pics isn't doing much, but my post said a strut bar which fully rings around the opening in the top hat would do significantly more.