What will come after the 2.4 V8?

[Pandamasque]

It makes more sense to develop more efficient combustion, electric storage, light weight electric motor generators, dual torque drive control, avoid ICE throttle losses and minimize drag/wake turbulence to improve the sport. All this can be done with largely specified engines but with emphasis on engineering efficiency. People who deny this do not mention the positive side of the work done by the FiA.

You just confirmed my point. You tell them what's more efficient and leave them spending exactly the same available cubic ton of $ fine-tuning what they're stuck with. Simple example - today's F1 wings are a whole lot more complicated than 10 years ago. However they are all more similar than ever. So what's the point of all that micro-development as becomes worthless if FIA changes the regs?

Strong disagree. You have to look at the field of tech that you open to competition.

And they do look at it quite often to ban more and more things, changing the regs all the time for no understandable reason. (see recent F-duct story - by the end of the year most of the teams will have it but the thing will be banned next year to avoid excessive spending).

Also, what are the fans going to look for in that new formula? Cheer for the best battery and alternator supplier? For a favourite driver and sponsoring brand? Well look where that brought Indy.

[WhiteBlue]

No they would be developing the technologies needed for the future. Nobody needs a 21,000 rpm engine. But ICE driven cars with 45 or 50% efficiency or a battery that powers a road car for 200 miles with 5 kg of mass would be great. It would be useful to spend money on such technology.

[xpensive]

No they would be developing the technologies needed for the future. Nobody needs a 21,000 rpm engine. But ICE driven cars with 45 or 50% efficiency or a battery that powers a road car for 200 miles with 5 kg of mass would be great. It would be useful to spend money on such technology.

Dreams are nice to have, but realism has always proven to be nicer, this is why a fuel-flow limitation should be implemented.

[WhiteBlue]

No they would be developing the technologies needed for the future. Nobody needs a 21,000 rpm engine. But ICE driven cars with 45 or 50% efficiency or a battery that powers a road car for 200 miles with 5 kg of mass would be great. It would be useful to spend money on such technology.

Dreams are nice to have, but realism has always proven to be nicer, this is why a fuel-flow limitation should be implemented.

There is no point in fuel flow limitation. It is no real incentive to be fuel efficient. At a certain point it simply limits the fuel flow for all regardless of how efficient the car is. It makes more sense to limit the total amount of fuel because the most efficient could use unlimited or al least higher power then. It would be a strong incentive to make the car use less fuel in all regimes.

[xpensive]

Sometimes it is a bit difficult to follow your logic, WB.

As efficiency, output over input, in this case is defined as engine power over fuel consumed, a fuel-flow limitation
would obviously give every incentive to produce an efficient engine by optimizing power to the given fuel-flow.

An xample, when this is rather simple actually;

- One liter of gasoline holds some 34 MJ, which equals 34 kJ, or 34 kWs, per cc.

- Limiting the fuel-flow to 50cc per second, then means an input power of 1700 kW.

- A 25% engine efficiency would as a result give an output power of 425 kW or 580 Hp.

- The engine that can bring efficiency to 30% would jump output power to 690 Hp.

Perhaps incentive enough to increase engine efficieny under a fuel-flow limit rule?

[WhiteBlue]

Nice in theory but unfortunately reality is different. The biggest efficiency jumps would be found when the engine works in partial load because it mostly runs at partial load in some GPs and has the highest parasitic losses there. Lets assume we would save 10% of our total fuel load in partial load regime.

Now with a max flow limit it would not be possible to increase our power setting beyond what is limited by the fuel flow. With unlimited flow but total budget we could spend the fuel saved in lower power settings to increase our power output and run faster top speed. QED

[xpensive]

As usual, you are so full of yourself you are not even trying to understand my calculations, just your typical arrogance.

[WhiteBlue]

As usual, you are so full of yourself you are not even trying to understand my calculations, just your typical arrogance.

It appears to me that it is just the other way around. You have been lecturing us on energy content of fuel forever. Trust me that I do understand this issue. On the other hand I try to show you where the specific improvements will be found. To be more specific one of the thermodynamic source of losses are throttling losses of petrol engines. They are biggest when the engine runs on small settings. With direct fuel injection you can avoid throttling losses. With fuel flow limitation you may not be able to utilize the fuel you save by avoiding throttling losses.

[xpensive]

But your contribution is just endless and repeatative novels, suspiciously copied and pasted, crack some numbers or give an xample or two and you can be sure that I will pay attention

[WhiteBlue]

It is pseudo scientific to throw figures around that do not describe a physical effect relevant to the issue at hand.

Throttling losses are relevant but I'm not able to quantify them at the moment. So I'm not giving figures.

Energy content of fuel is irrelevant to the issue of efficiency. The specific energy content of a given fuel will always be the same regardless of how efficiently we use it. So mentioning these figures is pseudo scientific.

When we talked about downforce, drag and power consumption I was giving some figures. Same applied to the tyre debate. I could shed some light on profile aspects of using 14 inch or 18 inch tyres. It shows that I use figures when it is clear what they contribute. I just avoid the use of them when they do not contribute to the debate.

[xpensive]

This is going nowhere, an engineer would know that the best way to describe a certain technical phenomenon, or argue a position,
is to give an xample with real numbers.

Just leave it there.

[CMSMJ1]

lol - you two are like a cranky old couple

I disagree with you WB in your message that ICE engines are irrelevant. The point of car racing is that there are engines in the packages. We can all understand them. Most of us drive cars and can appreciate that what we think is a noisy, fast road car is in fact a pile of agricultural crap compared to the cutting edge that is the 2.4 V8.

I do take your point about developement of other technology. The problem is that F1 is already about efficiency. I do not see why the BS green technology should be forced upon the F1 series.

If manufacturers want to independantly develop the technology then go for it..but not in F1. Go do it at Le Mans or in GT racing - where it is relevant.

[xpensive]

Right, things went a bit too far there.

Anyway, my point with the fuel-flow limit is that you can allow teams to run any engine they wish, plus you get an efficiency incentive.

An xample, when this is rather simple actually;

- One liter of gasoline holds some 34 MJ, which equals 34 kJ, or 34 kWs, per cc.

- Limiting the fuel-flow to 50cc per second, then means an input power of 1700 kW.

- A 25% engine efficiency would as a result give an output power of 425 kW or 580 Hp.

- The engine that can bring efficiency to 30% would jump output power to 690 Hp.

[WhiteBlue]

I will give a simplified engineering example why fuel load should be limited and not fuel flow:

We have a race of 90 minutes which is run with an average fuel consumption of 2 L/min.

We have 30 min of low power (450 hp) setting at 1.5 L/min using a total of 45 L
We have 30 min of medium or average power (600 hp) setting at 2.0 L/min using 60 L
We have 30 min of high power (750 hp) setting which is restricted at 2.5 L/min using 75 L

The engine is capable of max power (900 hp) which is reached at 3.0 L/min.

Now we say that the same car with a clone driver is given a new engine with direct fuel injection and HCCI combustion. The efficiency in low setting is increased by 10% and in medium setting by 5%. No efficiency gains are achieved in high and max power.

The effect of the efficiency gains is a drop of consumption by 4.5 L in low setting to 40.5 L and a drop by 3 L in medium setting to 57 L. Total fuel saving would be 7.5 L. As we have hit the fuel flow limit in high setting we would be bringing this extra fuel home or we would be driving on average with 3 kg less fuel on board.

Now we look at what will happen if we restrict the fuel load to 180 L effectively doing the same as the fuel flow limit but creating different incentives.

By using all the fuel he saved in the low setting parts of the lap (7.5 L) for a higher power setting (2.75 L/min) in the fastest part of the lap our driver will now be able to use 10% more power to achieve 825 hp in the fast part of the race.

If we double the efficiency gains the driver can now use 20% more or 900 hp in the fastest parts of the race track.

I bet every team would go for 10 or 20% more top power than 3 kg weight saving.

It shows that fuel limit will give a much higher incentive than a fuel flow limit.

[rjsa]

Right, things went a bit too far there.

Anyway, my point with the fuel-flow limit is that you can allow teams to run any engine they wish, plus you get an efficiency incentive.

An xample, when this is rather simple actually;

- One liter of gasoline holds some 34 MJ, which equals 34 kJ, or 34 kWs, per cc.

- Limiting the fuel-flow to 50cc per second, then means an input power of 1700 kW.

- A 25% engine efficiency would as a result give an output power of 425 kW or 580 Hp.

- The engine that can bring efficiency to 30% would jump output power to 690 Hp.

I'll have to stay with WB here.

If you limit energy flow, the optimum solution would be a something like a gas turbine running at optimum load and feeding a battery and an eletric drive system. Boring.

If you limit total energy used during race (total fuel amount) there is more room for variations.


Both cases would bring efficiency improvements.