Mercedes Power Unit Hardware & Software

[saviour stivala]

For any ICE to run at idle it will still have to breath air. All air ingested by its cylinders goes through the turbo compressor intake, any air that goes through the compressor intake have to go through the turbo compressor throttling system. When the throttling system in front of the formula one turbo compressor intake is closed, the compressor can breath no air.

[johnny comelately]

This latest evo of the Mercedes turbo strategy is a logical development of the principles of the twin scroll and the existing dual 180 feed to a dual twin scroll, giving the energy a more optimised positioning over the turbine wheel. The 6 into 4 quandry provides some phasing challenges which I could imagine will be further optimised.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmxRkAAlj3A

[AR3-GP]

Chrono GP tends to just make up stuff. They've been doing it about Ferrari for a long time. It's not substantiated by anything.

[johnny comelately]

Chrono GP tends to just make up stuff. They've been doing it about Ferrari for a long time. It's not substantiated by anything.

Leave out the source and discuss the merits of the design.
IMHO it is a very good advancement to optimise the exhaust pulses driving the turbine.
This is achieved by reducing the interference of one pulse against another both timing wise and positionally along the turbine length.
Which is substantial.

[saviour stivala]

Chrono GP tends to just make up stuff. They've been doing it about Ferrari for a long time. It's not substantiated by anything.

+1. Exactly. Although their computer 3D rendering graphics are artistically impressive it is solely their imaginative interpretations. Like others, I have been following them for a very long time. But have never seen anything they ever interpreted being officially confirmed by those that matter. Besides all that, these push-outs during an interesting particular discussion about a totally different technical subject are happening on here by the usual people who seem to run-out of steam on the subject proper being discussed at the moment. This deviation tactics caused by lack of steam pressure are by now very well recognized.

[AR3-GP]

Chrono GP tends to just make up stuff. They've been doing it about Ferrari for a long time. It's not substantiated by anything.

Leave out the source and discuss the merits of the design.
IMHO it is a very good advancement to optimise the exhaust pulses driving the turbine.
This is achieved by reducing the interference of one pulse against another both timing wise and positionally along the turbine length.
Which is substantial.

We can discuss merits of anything, but you claimed it was the Mercedes design. It's important to point out for other readers that Chrono GP is unsubstantiated. I too have been fooled in the past because their CGI is so good, you ask yourself how can it not be real but it's nothing more than good looking CGI. It's not to be considered representative.

[organic]

[PlatinumZealot]

This latest evo of the Mercedes turbo strategy is a logical development of the principles of the twin scroll and the existing dual 180 feed to a dual twin scroll, giving the energy a more optimised positioning over the turbine wheel. The 6 into 4 quandry provides some phasing challenges which I could imagine will be further optimised.
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca88777 ... tftyHqiUko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmxRkAAlj3A

It is not correct. The Mercedes is still three to one each bank.

The difference in look is because Mercede have moved the "bundle of snakes" behind the engine now.

[ispano6]

A quote from Hamilton during the US GP race weekend.

"Oh my God, man, jeez,” he said. “I came here after Montreal and I drove last year’s car, and ah, it was so good, and I remember getting out, just beaming from ear to ear. It was so smooth and I had good downforce, good power.

“This year we lost a bit of power with the biofuels and then the car is so stiff, and now coming and driving this car…

I thought Mercedes had made up the power loss from biofuels? Is this something they can't remedy until the next engine formula?

[Hoffman900]

Thanks for the picture/photo appreciate your find and posting on here. Will appreciate a link to were you found it as apart from the picture I was talking about, I have spend a lot of time trying to also trace this one, because Yes. I have also seen that picture/photo before but it is not the one I was talking about. This photo also shows the vanes fully closed from an Angle of the right side, it clearly shows the pivoting the vanes rotates on. The one I was talking about, and I am sure it was on this here forum and fairly recently, the photo was taken head-on and although the vanes pivoting is not shown, the vanes looks much neater and as I said they were hand numbered one to five with something like a jam marker.

I did a quick search on google and found a FB post about it. It does have more info.

I also found a Garret PDF describing the turbo cutaway you can see in one of the pictures where they describe the same use for the vanes.

The Audi LeMans diesel engines use this set up. RET Issue 100 (Feb 2017) has a whole section dedicated on it within the dossier of those engines including a 3D image of the internal linkage. To quote Audi “it allows for an infinitely adjustable air fuel ratio”

[Juzh]

A quote from Hamilton during the US GP race weekend.

"Oh my God, man, jeez,” he said. “I came here after Montreal and I drove last year’s car, and ah, it was so good, and I remember getting out, just beaming from ear to ear. It was so smooth and I had good downforce, good power.

“This year we lost a bit of power with the biofuels and then the car is so stiff, and now coming and driving this car…

I thought Mercedes had made up the power loss from biofuels? Is this something they can't remedy until the next engine formula?

Of course they can't (no one can) and why do you think all power loss has been made up? Since day one of 2022 all evidence has pointed to this not being the case and even in principle E10 has less energy density as opposed to regular fuels. Initial estimates when E10 was mandated in the rules put power loss at 5% at the least without mitigations. 5% is not something you can magically make up, this goes for all manufacturers as all of them are down on HP.

I remember a senior engine guy from honda saying in pre-season he has doubts over a rival engine manufacturer claiming they've regained all power lost from E10 and I believe he was very much right.

[Hoffman900]

I have said it here multiple times, but taking the derivative of velocity to get acceleration would be more insightful when comparing PU’s and deployment.

I believe the PU’s peak power wise are close to each other, and the difference is down to deployment which feeds back into how efficient the aero is and how much the car is in contact with the ground. Indy Car teams notoriously used harder metal on the bottoms of their cars (when they could do such a thing) to reduce contact frictional drag when the cars bottomed out and they have known for a long time, any little bit of the car that touches the track is a big time speed penalty. All those sparks and noise of the car bottoming out is big time costing them.

I firmly believe Mercede’s concept to run the car slammed on the ground is contributing to this, and Newey’s Indy Car experience has taught him the importance to keeping the car off the ground. Remember, all his ground effects experience came from there, not F1 (he was still in school when it was outlawed).

Next year, I suspect the car is run at a higher ride height and developed to run there.


Tying it back to the topic, there are too many “it depends” to make a really honest assessment of the Merc PU’s current form.

[johnny comelately]

I have said it here multiple times, but taking the derivative of velocity to get acceleration would be more insightful when comparing PU’s and deployment.

It is a far more accurate a tool than many would believe if you can get accurate data.
(having a little whinge) I can remember using and suggesting this in earlier times and got criticised by a few knobs but it was over the question "What is the power of the ICE" and nobody knew. At least it gave an indication

[Hoffman900]

I have said it here multiple times, but taking the derivative of velocity to get acceleration would be more insightful when comparing PU’s and deployment.

It is a far more accurate a tool than many would believe if you can get accurate data.
(having a little whinge) I can remember using and suggesting this in earlier times and got criticised by a few knobs but it was over the question "What is the power of the ICE" and nobody knew. At least it gave an indication

For sure. I suspect the velocity data we have it is too coarse and would need a lot of smoothing, and when you smooth the data, you’re going to lose accuracy. That said, it’s better than looking at velocity plots.

[dans79]

I have said it here multiple times, but taking the derivative of velocity to get acceleration would be more insightful when comparing PU’s and deployment.

It is a far more accurate a tool than many would believe if you can get accurate data.
(having a little whinge) I can remember using and suggesting this in earlier times and got criticised by a few knobs but it was over the question "What is the power of the ICE" and nobody knew. At least it gave an indication

I just worked on a project where I used a Savitzky–Golay filter to get smoothed velocity and acceleration data from positional data with some noise in it. It worked exceptionally well!