More engine talk!
Discussion
hairyben said:
So then, even if you add £25M to those or any other of the budget figures being bandied about my point still stands. Merc & co have still done both their sums and their engineering well and the result is a demonstration in good value.
Red bull have for some time, as is Neweys way, placed a lot of empathis on aero & chassis and perhaps regarded the power unit as a less important commodity. This may have served them well using the developed-to-near-homogeneous engines under the locked down rules in recent years, but perhaps they should have taken a different approach with the new regs and worked more closely with renault. Thats their biggest failing; I suppose for all his talent it might be Neweys Achilles heel, and horner needs to take his oil and get his best men working on it instead of whining that its not fair.
No, your point is plain wrong.Red bull have for some time, as is Neweys way, placed a lot of empathis on aero & chassis and perhaps regarded the power unit as a less important commodity. This may have served them well using the developed-to-near-homogeneous engines under the locked down rules in recent years, but perhaps they should have taken a different approach with the new regs and worked more closely with renault. Thats their biggest failing; I suppose for all his talent it might be Neweys Achilles heel, and horner needs to take his oil and get his best men working on it instead of whining that its not fair.
Merc HPE spent some $1Bn developing the new powertrain, what the teams pay for them is peanuts by comparison.
For ref, Renault spent about half that, and ferrari somewhere between.
hairyben said:
How is my point wrong?
I've seen a few different overall engine development cost figures bandies about most of which put them lesser and closer but what I've not heard disputed is that mercs engine program, like Gaz says, will be cost-neutral in the end once everyone (inc the merc team write off) have "paid" for their engines.
Are you just bad at maths?I've seen a few different overall engine development cost figures bandies about most of which put them lesser and closer but what I've not heard disputed is that mercs engine program, like Gaz says, will be cost-neutral in the end once everyone (inc the merc team write off) have "paid" for their engines.
4 teams pay $25m for engine deals, that's $100m a year, so ow many years to pay back not forgetting the costs if building them and support still carries on year on year?
At one point, there were over 800 people at brixworth working on it, and they are not in minimum wage...
REALIST123 said:
zac510 said:
Scuffers said:
At one point, there were over 800 people at brixworth working on it, and they are not in minimum wage...
Do you have a source for where you got the number of staff at HPE?About Us:
Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains are based in Brixworth, Northamptonshire at the purpose built Mercedes-Benz Technology Centre. There, a team of over 400 people are responsible for the design, manufacture and testing of Formula 1 power units for MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, Force India F1 and the Williams F1 team.
The company is built on three pillars of success; Quality, Technical Excellence and Speed & Flexibility. These traits have seen the Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 engine power Lewis Hamilton (2008) and Jenson Button (2009) in the Formula 1 Drivers' World championship and Brawn GP in the 2009 Formula 1 Constructors' World Championship.
"The objective of Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains is to win Formula 1 World Championships"
during the development last year, they drafted in a lot of outside help, mostly on the electronics/electro-mechanical side.
(Also worth remembering that not everybody on the project was on-site at Brixworth.)
upsidedownmark said:
In order for those numbers to be meaningful you need to put that into context against the ICE part of the equation. So, for something VERY ballpark and with a bit of googling:
Something around 1.7-2kg/lap of fuel
Petrol is around 44.5Mj/kg
Internal combustion engines are around 30% efficient
So that's (very) approximately 26 Mj of 'fossil' energy per lap. Which means ERS is throwing in about 7-8% of the energy usage lap on lap, assuming that you can harvest enough round the lap in order to achieve that.
I think is a pretty safe assumption (remember you can cap the boost by harvesting energy from the turbo using ERS instead of opening the wastegate for instance) Total energy store only comes into the equation IF they cannot put in what they take out lap on lap. I guess there may be reasons why that would happen, but I've not heard any mention of that during the season; I figure that's more likely to do with duty cycle on the energy store.
I would expect the ERS to contribute a bit more than that in laptime, given that the energy can be used in many interesting ways, particularly to smooth out torque curves, spin up the turbo, and otherwise cover lag etc. In short it's going to give you a car that just responds more quickly, and accurately than a conventional turbocharged engine. Of course, you could turn that (hypothetical) 7% performance around and say they'd have to use 7% more 'fossil' energy to go the same speed without ERS (arguably more due to the driveability constraints).
you're on the right lines, BUT!Something around 1.7-2kg/lap of fuel
Petrol is around 44.5Mj/kg
Internal combustion engines are around 30% efficient
So that's (very) approximately 26 Mj of 'fossil' energy per lap. Which means ERS is throwing in about 7-8% of the energy usage lap on lap, assuming that you can harvest enough round the lap in order to achieve that.
I think is a pretty safe assumption (remember you can cap the boost by harvesting energy from the turbo using ERS instead of opening the wastegate for instance) Total energy store only comes into the equation IF they cannot put in what they take out lap on lap. I guess there may be reasons why that would happen, but I've not heard any mention of that during the season; I figure that's more likely to do with duty cycle on the energy store.
I would expect the ERS to contribute a bit more than that in laptime, given that the energy can be used in many interesting ways, particularly to smooth out torque curves, spin up the turbo, and otherwise cover lag etc. In short it's going to give you a car that just responds more quickly, and accurately than a conventional turbocharged engine. Of course, you could turn that (hypothetical) 7% performance around and say they'd have to use 7% more 'fossil' energy to go the same speed without ERS (arguably more due to the driveability constraints).
the regs state that energy recovered from the turbo cannot be 'stored' and has to be 'used', the ES is solely there to store recovered brake energy.
this is why in qualifying, they enevitable do a 'charging' lap to get the ES full so that they can use the full 4Mj in one lap, as the regs limit ERS to half that per lap.
I am lead to believe the power Merc get from the MGU-H (turbo) per lap easily exceeds the 2Mj limit for ERS, hence why Nico both in the last race and Canada did not really loose out that much on laptime, the loose is more about lack of rear braking and 'kick' of boost out of slow corners.
jsf said:
There is an interesting conversation between Rosberg and his engineer when Nico was due to pit with his ERS failed. Based on that I think the ERS has a much larger influence on turbo performance than I realised. They must be running a pretty big compressor wheel in these turbo's and are relying significantly on the ERS to spin them up, giving a much laggier response than you would engineer in without an ERS boosted spool rate, if they were conventionally driven by the hot side. This may be a way to exploit the split turbo design easier too and will help reduce torsional twist on the connecting shaft if you are driving the turbo via the ERS all the time.
you may be onto something there...they can use the ES to spin up the turbo, but this eats into the 2Mj/lap limit, if they can use the ERS directly during braking to keep it spinning, that's effectively 'free' power..
EddyP said:
There was a video done recently analysing the Honda F1 renders that have been released and they suggested the Merc was running something like a 300mm diameter compressor.
jsf said:
Blimey, that will flow some air once it's spinning.
I run a 72mm compressor wheel on my 2.1 litre. That's producing just shy of 500BHP and just over 500ftlb torque at 1.8BAR boost at 125,000rpm, to give you some idea of the potential of a compressor wheel of that size.
I don't think they mean a 300mm compressor wheel! (it's not like you can see/measure it from the outside)I run a 72mm compressor wheel on my 2.1 litre. That's producing just shy of 500BHP and just over 500ftlb torque at 1.8BAR boost at 125,000rpm, to give you some idea of the potential of a compressor wheel of that size.
I would suggest they are on about how big the compressor housing is, and although 300mm is still pretty big, is not ridiculous, my guess is that they are going for the highest efficiency compressor design running at the lowest shaft speed possible, which kind of makes sense when you consider what the MGU-H has to work with.
(in off-the-shelf turbo terms, the biggest Garrett (GT6041) that's rated at 1,300-2,000Hp has a 105.7/141.2 (Ind/Exd) compressor wheel, it's compressor housing is just shy of 300mm)
upsidedownmark said:
The max boost you can run is practically limited by physics - detonation, peak cylinder pressure etc.
well, yes and no.- if* there were no fuel limits, you would be right, however, as they run to fuel flow limits, max air-mass is limited by how lean you dare run the engine.
the clever bit with these engines is to get the max out of the exhaust turbine without massively compromising the boost required at inlet (ie, the ratio of MAP to E-Map).
upsidedownmark said:
Intrigued by your last comment - flow out is a direct function of flow in plus burning fuel, or are you referring to the turbine design/optimisation? That would be rather interesting as I'd expect it to be very determined by the conditions under which they chose to run the turbine - RPMs, nozzle etc. Interestingly the regs also ban variable geometry vanes, inlets etc. I'm inclined to suspect that the contemporary F1 turbo is very different to a typical 'free' turbo, and largely down to the MGU-H.. but that's rather beyond my level.
what I was getting at (and I don't know the answer to this) is this;to get more energy out of the exhaust turbine (for the MGU-H) will inevitably mean higher E-Map, this in turn will raise MAP and to some extent, reduce the output of the IC engine.
the question is do they make more in recovery than the penalty in parasitics?
if by upping E-Map to recover another X Kw, is the increased parasitics less than X Kw?
now, going back to the comment on compressor size, that would imply they are running it at significantly less than the 125,000Rpm limit and also they are chasing ultimate adiabatic efficiency at highish boost levels (if you ignore anything else, a larger compressor wheel at lower rpm will be several points more efficient at the same flow/pressure point, the downside would be lag, but with the MGU-H driving it, that problem disappears.
upsidedownmark said:
http://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/regulation/...
5.9 Variable geometry systems :
5.9.1 With the exception of devices needed for control of pressure charging systems, variable
geometry exhaust systems are not permitted. No form of variable geometry turbine (VGT) or
variable nozzle turbine (VNT) or any device to adjust the gas throat section at the inlet to the
turbine wheel is permitted.
???
ETA: My read - 'devices needed for control of pressure charging systems' = wastegate.
I agree..5.9 Variable geometry systems :
5.9.1 With the exception of devices needed for control of pressure charging systems, variable
geometry exhaust systems are not permitted. No form of variable geometry turbine (VGT) or
variable nozzle turbine (VNT) or any device to adjust the gas throat section at the inlet to the
turbine wheel is permitted.
???
ETA: My read - 'devices needed for control of pressure charging systems' = wastegate.
only change I can see for 2015 is this line:
5.9.3 Variable length intake trumpets are forbidden in 2014 only.
not sure if there is any gain from implementing this on a FI engine?
Gassing Station | Formula 1 | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff