95 - 02 F1 Tech

[petop]

poppopbangbang said:

petop said:

Really good thread. I went around the Lotus Renault F1 factory last year and the scale of everything that goes into putting these cars on to the grid was immense. The static suspension tuning bay where the operator said when Alonso was going around the "old" Renault setup he could watch the car on the mountings replicating the surface on a track and could tell them which track it was simulating. We also saw a couple of the older cars like the RS26 and the like.

This is actually a really good point and one I should touch on. We are basically the build and race team when compared to a modern F1 team - in that we assemble the cars from parts and support them during running. In a modern F1 team this "bit" of the business is actually the small bit in terms of floor space and budget with the R&D and engineering departments making up the bulk of any modern team.

We do have some R&D/Test facilities in that we have a basic sim, gearbox dyno etc. but no where near the autoclavy, 20 seat CAD department goodness a modern team has It's one thing I find quite funny for want of a better term as our "shop" is way above that which you would find in even a BTCC team or good privateer LMP team but to the F1 guys we're the bit out the back where engines get bolted to tubs

A case in point was the CAD facility for Lotus Renault is in a seperate underground area. It reminded me of a James Bond villians hangout! The server room was massive, all temp controlled with Boeing stickers on them....it turns out that LR use programs that Boeing use for aerodynamics to model the cars, in turn engineers do work for Boeing in their tea break!

[Megaflow]

That's not the CAD system, that's the CFD system. Computational Fluid Dynamics, fundamentally a virtual wind tunnel, put a 3D CAD model in it, and it will tell you how it performs. But, even with a super computer of that size, the calculations still take days.

[Ian974]

Have you found any interesting/ over complicated solutions or workarounds for some of the regulations, or are there parts which have now been simplified compared to the original build? Not thinking of anything in particular, but more what physical differences there are between the money no object approach to rigid rules during F1 competition and now with presumably more open rules but a tighter budget, other than turning down the engine revs etc.

Echo the comments on this being an excellent thread!

[dr_gn]

petop said:

....it turns out that LR use programs that Boeing use for aerodynamics to model the cars, in turn engineers do work for Boeing in their tea break!

It's not quite as simple as that

Boeing have had an involvement with Enstone for a while, although it's not that well publicised. Here's a picture I took in the paddock at F1 testing at Silverstone back in '08:



Can you spot the - very subtle - link to Boeing?

[Ian Lancs]

dr_gn said:

petop said:

....it turns out that LR use programs that Boeing use for aerodynamics to model the cars, in turn engineers do work for Boeing in their tea break!

It's not quite as simple as that

Boeing have had an involvement with Enstone for a while, although it's not that well publicised. Here's a picture I took in the paddock at F1 testing at Silverstone back in '08:



Can you spot the - very subtle - link to Boeing?

They're not using their "normal" logo

[dr_gn]

Ian Lancs said:

dr_gn said:

petop said:

....it turns out that LR use programs that Boeing use for aerodynamics to model the cars, in turn engineers do work for Boeing in their tea break!

It's not quite as simple as that

Boeing have had an involvement with Enstone for a while, although it's not that well publicised. Here's a picture I took in the paddock at F1 testing at Silverstone back in '08:



Can you spot the - very subtle - link to Boeing?

They're not using their "normal" logo

They were using Boeing's "Phantom Works" division. Phantom Works is a bit like Lockheed's Skunk Works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Phantom_Works

Edited by dr_gn on Sunday 5th January 20:32

[poppopbangbang]

dr_gn said:

It's not quite as simple as that

Boeing have had an involvement with Enstone for a while, although it's not that well publicised. Here's a picture I took in the paddock at F1 testing at Silverstone back in '08:



Can you spot the - very subtle - link to Boeing?

I can spot the not so subtle nod to the fact that modern F1 teams have military level processing power that for all intense and purpose is free of the restrictions or expected visibility one may find in a heavily goverment involved organisation. Want to model part of something without having to fess up to it, ever? Find an outside contractor

[Ian Lancs]

dr_gn said:

Ian Lancs said:

dr_gn said:

petop said:

....it turns out that LR use programs that Boeing use for aerodynamics to model the cars, in turn engineers do work for Boeing in their tea break!

It's not quite as simple as that

Boeing have had an involvement with Enstone for a while, although it's not that well publicised. Here's a picture I took in the paddock at F1 testing at Silverstone back in '08:



Can you spot the - very subtle - link to Boeing?

They're not using their "normal" logo

They were using Boeing's "Phantom Works" division. Phantom Works is a bit like Lockheed's Skunk Works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Phantom_Works

Edited by dr_gn on Sunday 5th January 20:32

I knew that - I was refering to them not using the Phantom works logo as sits on a colleagues desk. Having looked around the Boeing site they;ve taken it down as well and gone for text only

[DaveL485]

Just wanted to say- Great thread!

[uktrailmonster]

poppopbangbang said:

The BARs do leave you occasionally thinking 'should have done better' because elements of them were very clever indeed.

The Honda engines were way down on power compared to the opposition at the time (I'm talking 100s of hp). Honda were hung up on reliability at all cost and set very conservative rpm limits for the BAR engines. It was very frustrating. Hence what happened with Brawn when a competitive engine was finally bolted on!

[Steve UK]

uktrailmonster said:

The Honda engines were way down on power compared to the opposition at the time (I'm talking 10s of hp). Honda were hung up on reliability at all cost and set very conservative rpm limits for the BAR engines. It was very frustrating. Hence what happened with Brawn when a competitive engine was finally bolted on!

There you go fixed that for you :-)

[Vaud]

Steve UK said:

There you go fixed that for you :-)

At their peak, there was a max of what, 5-8% difference in hp in engines? IIRC the engines evolve form about 750hp to, at a somewhat explosive peak of 900-930 in the late stages of V10s? And 750-780 in 2.4 v8s?

[Steve UK]

Vaud said:

Steve UK said:

There you go fixed that for you :-)

At their peak, there was a max of what, 5-8% difference in hp in engines? IIRC the engines evolve form about 750hp to, at a somewhat explosive peak of 900-930 in the late stages of V10s? And 750-780 in 2.4 v8s?

Sound right to me, certainly not 100's dop

[Megaflow]

I'm not sure they were even behind. I have a video in my youtube favourites on Honda F1 engines on the dyno, and this is a screen shot of the dyno screen:



The left hand 'gauge' clearly shows ~15,000rpm, most likely 15,136rpm according to the green data in the top left of the screen.

The right hand 'gauge' shows ~990 something, but the something has clearly been blurred out, it doesn't take a genius to work out what that gauge might be.

Now, whether they ever raced such power is a different thing entirely.

Assuming those numbers are correct, that is 343lb/ft, which would seem to point to it being a 3.5 litre engine for a specific torque of 98lb/ft/ltr and a BMEP of 16.7bar.

All of which are entirely achievable.

[stevesingo]

Link to the video?

[Megaflow]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtmD0fI2FEU&li...

Jump to ~3m 30s for the dyno screen close up. It had been a while since I took the screen dump and it isn't the best actually. That power is not made at 15,136, it looks like I have captured it on the lift on and there is a delay in dyno response or something because later on it shows the engine under power producing similar power at ~18k rpm. Which would be mouch more like it for a 3.0ltr engine, which it clearly is by the top exit exhausts.

Also the big blue rectangles are hiding something as well.

ETA: It's not quite clear where peak power is, but somewhere around 18,500rpm.

So that gives:
Torque: 281lb/ft
Specific Torque: 93.7lb/ft/ltr
BMEP: 15.9bar

Edited by Megaflow on Tuesday 7th January 12:14

[stevesingo]

Cheers

I think we may be looking at EGT, not power. The lag is too great to RPM and Alpha (Throttle position), there are times when the Alpha is 75% for a few seconds, at which point you would expect the power to be significantly reduced. Also, they seem to be doing simulations on a transient dyno which I imagine could be a durability of calibration test where EGT would be closely monitored.

Edited by stevesingo on Tuesday 7th January 12:57

[uktrailmonster]

Steve UK said:

Vaud said:

Steve UK said:

There you go fixed that for you :-)

At their peak, there was a max of what, 5-8% difference in hp in engines? IIRC the engines evolve form about 750hp to, at a somewhat explosive peak of 900-930 in the late stages of V10s? And 750-780 in 2.4 v8s?

Sound right to me, certainly not 100's dop

No mate, I was there at BAR and personally involved in the discussions with the Honda engineers. The engine was throttled back massively for actual track usage. It could produce more power, but they wouldn't let us use it. It became quite a sore point as you can imagine. The race power output was well under 700 hp in 2001, when the BMW was already pushing 900 or more at the time. It was a joke to be honest.

[uktrailmonster]

Megaflow said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtmD0fI2FEU&li...

Jump to ~3m 30s for the dyno screen close up. It had been a while since I took the screen dump and it isn't the best actually. That power is not made at 15,136, it looks like I have captured it on the lift on and there is a delay in dyno response or something because later on it shows the engine under power producing similar power at ~18k rpm. Which would be mouch more like it for a 3.0ltr engine, which it clearly is by the top exit exhausts.

Also the big blue rectangles are hiding something as well.

ETA: It's not quite clear where peak power is, but somewhere around 18,500rpm.

So that gives:
Torque: 281lb/ft
Specific Torque: 93.7lb/ft/ltr
BMEP: 15.9bar

Edited by Megaflow on Tuesday 7th January 12:14

Peak power was certainly at around 18.5K for the 3.0 litre engines, but nothing remotely close to 1000 hp for the Honda. As above, I was a development engineer for BAR and worked closely with Honda on their test program. It was a while back, but I remember the headline numbers pretty well.

[Megaflow]

stevesingo said:

Cheers

I think we may be looking at EGT, not power. The lag is too great to RPM and Alpha (Throttle position), there are times when the Alpha is 75% for a few seconds, at which point you would expect the power to be significantly reduced. Also, they seem to be doing simulations on a transient dyno which I imagine could be a durability of calibration test where EGT would be closely monitored.

Edited by stevesingo on Tuesday 7th January 12:57

What units would they be measuring EGT in to get 990? It would explain the lag in rpm vs the right hand 'gauge'.