A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
Lithium-ion battery energy density: 460,000 joules per Kg (2.2 lb)
Does this sound right?
That could very well be the only battery we see in the one picture. Based on the lithium battery in my race car, that is the right size for that weight. Of coarse I don't worry about temps because I am not dumping in 6.6 sec.
Brian
The batteries are waaay more than that capacity. Because they have a full recharge on the next lap. it is easy to assume they have more than twice 400 KiloJoules. Maybe even hold 1 MegaJoule in my estimation.
OK - I will work with it and say the battery pack is beside the gearbox. I just want to see reasoning, taking into account all the observable facts as to why people CONCLUDE that the KERS battery is undercooled.
@n smikle, i dont believe anyone can so surely conclude battery over heating or undercooling is the issue with the kers. To me that seems like the most straight forward fix, is simply increase the size of the body work at the back to then increase the cooling capacity of the kers battery. They have more space than the competing teams and the slight increase in space wouldn't affect their pace that critically.
people may argue that newey demanded the space requirements, but in my opinion its not logical.
As to their current positioning in by the gearbox and exhausts is because RedBull opted to situate the engine as far forward as possible to maximise the coke bottle rear end, and by placing the battery unit behind the engine, they could gain that slight advantage.
As to the Kers issues, in my opinion its most likely to be hardware in the controller or the power unit caused by vibrations or other causes. Because a overheating issue would mean intermittent kers problems as the temperatures rise and fall with use and no use, where as Webber had no use of his kers all of saturday or sunday, inherently saying that battery temperatures are not the major contributing factor
EDIT: i am not ruling out high temperatures, as the behavior of Vettels Kers in Spain is consistent with what i would expect from an overheating issue
Last edited by Robbobnob on 15 Jun 2011, 08:56, edited 1 time in total.
"I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitations, psychological limitations. It's a way of life for me." - Ayrton Senna
@hardingfv32, the aluminium box with the big red cable to me seems like a component of the kers system, the high gauged cable suggests high currents to me.
and the 2nd photo thats not a light but in fact the hook that the car jack latches onto in the pitstops
"I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitations, psychological limitations. It's a way of life for me." - Ayrton Senna
I´m pretty sure 90% of electric/electronic glitches are temperature related in one or another way.
Add to this the vibrations and some other charecteristic in subcomponents and you are along for a ride.
Never heard of potting compounds taking up moisture and failing at certain temperatures due to pressure buildup ,pcb boards warping under temperature loads ,or soldering process residuals affecting lifetime of electrric circuitry ...I don´t know how big RedBulls KERS department is ,but you can imagine that as soon as you are running into trouble with components /subcomponents the guys in charge will rarely be specialists in this field...e.g. they have battery or KERS knowledge but these guys may have never worked with the special requirements of formula 1 and underestimated the problem areas.
the box is the KERS control unit KCU
Last edited by marcush. on 15 Jun 2011, 18:05, edited 1 time in total.
He's talking about camber. Generally you don't use as much camber in the wet which may explain the difference in cars in the wet. A dry running comparison would be more representative.
Motorsport Graduate in search of team experience ;)
MrBlacky wrote:Look at this extreme camber relative to the Ferrari's.
Little more static camber, sure. So what?
It's huge compared to all other cars in the field.
Yes... teams run different setups... this is nothing new.
Maybe Ferrari gets more camber through caster with steer, mid-corner. Maybe Red Bull go for more camber for mid-corner speed at the expense of braking, or trail-braking.
Maybe Ferrari and Red Bull interpret their tires differently with regard to durability and degradation.
Grip is a four letter word. All opinions are my own and not those of current or previous employers.
http://yfrog.com/kgmpthj Novedades en #REDBULL, soporte del alerón delantero más ancho en el GP CANADÁ, como el de #FERRARI...
Yes !!! A Ferrari invention being copied around F1. Let the good times roll. Now if the Scuderia just had a car to compliment Fred. I am seriously happy to see a Ferrari innovation being copied again. It's been too long. In case anyone wondered: I'm talking about the phat azz wing pylons
“To be able to actually make something is awfully nice”
Bruce McLaren on building his first McLaren racecars, 1970
“I've got to be careful what I say, but possibly to probably Juan would have had a bigger go”
Sir Frank Williams after the 2003 Canadian GP, where Ralf hesitated to pass brother M. Schumacher
Pierce89 wrote:Yes !!! A Ferrari invention being copied around F1. Let the good times roll. Now if the Scuderia just had a car to compliment Fred. I am seriously happy to see a Ferrari innovation being copied again. It's been too long. In case anyone wondered: I'm talking about the phat azz wing pylons
And that Ferrari invention was based on the skirts of Renault and the long pillars toro Rosso had last year.
Pierce89 wrote:Yes !!! A Ferrari invention being copied around F1. Let the good times roll. Now if the Scuderia just had a car to compliment Fred. I am seriously happy to see a Ferrari innovation being copied again. It's been too long. In case anyone wondered: I'm talking about the phat azz wing pylons
And that Ferrari invention was based on the skirts of Renault and the long pillars toro Rosso had last year.
Yup, Toro Rosso had them last year from Hungary onwards. And the fact that the Renault R29 had them was where STR got them from after a Renault design guy defected to them after Renault had their "dead wood" clear out early last year.
All they do is condition the air toward the T Tray splitter, just another flow conditioner. Probably worth 1 or 2 points of downforce at the rear of the car at the diffuser.
The only downside is the ammount of carbon fiber that is used in the construction, it probably means you loose up to 1kg at the rear of the car, but with the mandatory weight distrubution it dosnt really make a diffrence.