2014-2020 Formula One 1.6l V6 turbo engine formula

[PlatinumZealot]

lol.. yeah even today's engines are not exaclty 2.4 liters but under 2.3xx. It's just easier to work with "normal" nominal numbers.

The bank angle will likely be 60 degrees?

[gridwalker]

An interesting article from Mr Saward : http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/06/ ... f1-engine/

So, it looks like in the absence of Volkswagen, Red Bull might be considering their own programme (using engine design company AVL to design a powerplant). I would be surprised if Red Bull became an independent marque before McLaren does, however the Red Bull corporation certainly has the financial muscle required to be able to invest in this kind of project.

If Red Bull can successfully develop a winning engine using AVL in the same way that Mercedes used Ilmor, could this be a launchpad into a bigger project? Imagine the marketing value from a Red Bull branded GRE block? You could have customers PAYING Red Bull to use equipment that would place the Red Bull brand within the team name; a complete reversal from the sponsorship arrangements that Red Bull have financed over previous decades.

This could be a very smart move indeed.

[Pierce89]

So we have a lex Ferrari and a delay of one year to the original plan. The manufacturing cost will increase for an engine with two cylinder banks and the engine will be heavier and more bulky. The efficiency will be reduced compared to an I4 and the space for KERS will probably be reduced as well. And all this only that Ferrari have their marketing needs satisfied.

I'm happy that they finally found a solution but it is sad to see how one team can blackmail the whole F1 world into doing something irrational that is only wasting time and money.

The FiA has been forced to go back to the debate which was already decided a year ago and revise the decision of the expert group. The manufacturers will have to scrap most of the work they have done in the last seven month and the fuel wasting will continue one more year. At least we are going to see the new technology in 2014 and hopefully they have included a resource restriction plan in the compromise. If not we will have the next crisis when Cosworth, Mercedes and Renault find out that they are forced into a cost race they do not want to support.

Toys out of pram moment, no?

[Pierce89]

@don

Oh come now, you know our kind by now don't you, we haven't stood up for ourselves since we were graced with a French king 200 years ago? Valhalla is not even teached at scool any longer, neither is our ancestors discovery of North Dakota, remember the runestone found?

Anyyway, in order to pledge my solidarity with the US of A;

Who was the first to lap 200 mph in a USAC car and who was eternally pissed off not to be the first?

If you don't find any f1 fans in Santa Fe Springs, I'm only a 48 hour drive across the country. But seriously though, if you've not spent much time here, the hardest thing to get used to is how spread out the U.S. is in comparison to Europe. One more F1 fan in the U.S. that makes 50 of us I think.

[WhiteBlue]

The myth about the the I4 being unfit in a stressed engine design has been debunked many times. Just go back a few pages where you find several examples to the contrary.

No it is not a myth. The structure and layout of an inline simply does not lend itself to that kind of configuration, and what was pointed out several pages back is that there is always some kind of strengthening or cradling required over a V.

Claiming that being stressed or unstressed doesn't matter, as you did a few pages back, simply doesn't help the case. In Formula 1 a stressed engine block was shown to be the way to go over forty years ago.

This is nonsense as I can quickly show. It was shown in F3 and Ulrich Baretzky has said that it is no problem to make the design stiff enoug with the necessary frame extensions to the block. You can also do a semi stressing like BMW did in FBMW and it is as rigiud as required with a lot less weight than a V6. It is a bit tiring to hear this propaganda again and again.
The BMW F1 block was designed in 1973 long before CAD was generally used for such things. Today it is no issue. You simply have to specify the stiffness and the designers will optimise the shape in stressed or semi stressed design to your requirements and you can choose whatever fits your preferences better. Tha you don't need huge square crossections is obvious from the very slim gearboxes F1 is using. So on that side it is no problem at all. On the tub side you simply add the necessary arms and ribs to the block.

[donskar]

An interesting article from Mr Saward : http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/06/ ... f1-engine/

So, it looks like in the absence of Volkswagen, Red Bull might be considering their own programme (using engine design company AVL to design a powerplant). I would be surprised if Red Bull became an independent marque before McLaren does, however the Red Bull corporation certainly has the financial muscle required to be able to invest in this kind of project.

If Red Bull can successfully develop a winning engine using AVL in the same way that Mercedes used Ilmor, could this be a launchpad into a bigger project? Imagine the marketing value from a Red Bull branded GRE block? You could have customers PAYING Red Bull to use equipment that would place the Red Bull brand within the team name; a complete reversal from the sponsorship arrangements that Red Bull have financed over previous decades.

This could be a very smart move indeed.

Long, LONG ago, when F1 actually had a variety of engines, an Austrian firm designed and built (at least a mockup) a pretty standard 60-degree V12, all alloy, 4 cams, etc. It was meant to prove Austria had very advanced technical capabilities, but (IIRC) nothing ever came of it.

[donskar]

Sounds like the specs for the new V6 F1 engine have not been set in stone yet. Has it been established whether it will be restricted to a single turbo?

[twoshots]

The V6 is cheaper to develop since you can chop off two cylinders from the V8 and adjust wall thickness and material etc. No need to make new mounting points etc.

No. The move from V10 to V8 was far, far from cheap. You certainly don't just chop off two cylinders.

Either way, I4 or V6, it is a redesign from the ground up. Neither option could ever be described as cheap.

I wonder how much money has been spent designing F1 spec I4's to date? I'll bet it's an eye-watering amount.

[HampusA]

Sounds like the specs for the new V6 F1 engine have not been set in stone yet. Has it been established whether it will be restricted to a single turbo?

I´m hoping that the turbo setup will be open atleast.

I´m guessing Tri-turbos, one for low rpm, one for mid range and one for top range.

[Pierce89]

The V6 is cheaper to develop since you can chop off two cylinders from the V8 and adjust wall thickness and material etc. No need to make new mounting points etc.

No. The move from V10 to V8 was far, far from cheap. You certainly don't just chop off two cylinders.

Either way, I4 or V6, it is a redesign from the ground up. Neither option could ever be described as cheap.

I wonder how much money has been spent designing F1 spec I4's to date? I'll bet it's an eye-watering amount.

I would think they've spent mostly only man-hours to date. At the farthest I think they'd be on single cylinder test mules, but more likely not even out of conceptual design considering how strong the chances of the change have been all along.

[andrew]

It would have been foolish to do anything too in depth until the format was at least nearly confirmed.

[noname]

I´m hoping that the turbo setup will be open atleast.

I´m guessing Tri-turbos, one for low rpm, one for mid range and one for top range.

You do not need multi-turbo configurations when there is MGU to help during transients.
Also revs. range these engine will be opearting will not be wide enough to create the need for more than one turbo.
And the FIA approach, so far, was clear - just one turbo.

[PlatinumZealot]

The V6 is cheaper to develop since you can chop off two cylinders from the V8 and adjust wall thickness and material etc. No need to make new mounting points etc.

No. The move from V10 to V8 was far, far from cheap. You certainly don't just chop off two cylinders.

Either way, I4 or V6, it is a redesign from the ground up. Neither option could ever be described as cheap.

I wonder how much money has been spent designing F1 spec I4's to date? I'll bet it's an eye-watering amount.

Yes, you do just chop of two cylinders for V10 to V8 in terms of the block.. you just chop that stuff off and change the bank angle. BAM! V6 block.

I am a BMW fan right... The BMW engines, if you have ever examined a BMW I4, it is almost literally the straight six version with 2 cylinders chopped off. The BMW M3 V8, the block is pretty much the V10 with two cylinders chopped off. Of course you gatta change cranks and cams etc.. but there is less work since you already have done structural designs tests on the less stiff I6 and V8.

the 4 cylinder is a far cry structurally from a V6 and a V8. You have to start from Scratch! To emphasise; Ferrari has never made a 4 cylinder! imagine where are the data they have to fall back on? that's right, they have none, so they to start from scratch! experiments, failures, trials, tests, just too much time and money to start from scratch. The V6, you just chop of two cylinders and the block is instantly stiffer than a V8.. no worries in that department.
Then you throw in your crank, chuck on the conrods and pistons, slap on the cams and you are good to go.

[twoshots]

By that logic an I4 is just a V8 rolled on it's side with 4 cylinders chopped off.

...in terms of the block.. you just chop that stuff off and change the bank angle. BAM! V6 block.
...
Then you throw in your crank, chuck on the conrods and pistons, slap on the cams and you are good to go.

I suggest that it is far more complicated than that. The block will be reworked for V6.

From a V8 the bore will change, inter bore spacing will change, staggered cylinders might be needed, crank throw (piston stroke) will change, the cylinder pressures will be much higher, cooling requirements will change, conrods will change, balancing (or not) requirements will change and some of these will change between test versions of a V6.
But the bank angle won't change.

If it's not stiff enough after you've designed the rest you can just add webbing where it is needed. You certainly don't need to worry excessively about it at the start.

Cheap it ain't. Fun though.

[WhiteBlue]

Ross Brawn tells some interesting details about the development objectives of the engine and the chassis in the 2011 Friday Valencia press conference:

All the manufacturers who are currently supplying engines in Formula One have signed an agreement that this is the engine we're going to support in the future. That's as good as it can be.

I think there are many considerations we have to make when we are changing the power plant in Formula One and obviously the technology in the automotive field is changing and the big question is how relevant do we need to be and how relevant do we want to be. I think there is a justification for relevance in the type of engines we have in the future. We don't want to end up as a dinosaur in five or ten years and the technology I see that we're working on with these new engines is the technology that is going to become commonplace in road car engines in the future: small capacity, turbocharged engine, direct injection, special KERS systems. They're all going to be the technology we're going to be using in the future and when you do that, you can generate a lot more interest with a manufacturer, and we want to try and get some manufacturers back into Formula One and we won't get that if we continue with a V8 normally aspirated engine. So I think the engine has much more relevance. The cost is a very good question. I think the concept of the resource restriction we have with the chassis is now being put in place for the engine, to make sure that there is a framework that you have to work within, to design, build and develop this engine and the FIA are working with the manufacturers to create that framework and I think that's a very important initiative to encourage manufacturers to come in, because they will know that they can enter Formula One for a cost and they won't get outspent. They will need to be cleverer than their competitors for the same amount of money.

Personally, from an engineering perspective, I think it's a little bit of a shame that we're so biased towards aerodynamics and not more towards systems or suspension because all these systems and things that we'd like to do have had to be stopped because we go too fast and we get too fast because we optimise the usage of the aerodynamics and it would be nice to find a way of pulling back the aerodynamics and allowing a bit more freedom in these particular areas, but that's just a personal view of finding a balance. So, I think we will never be able to ignore the aerodynamic performance of a Formula One car and that's one of the things that make it so special. I think it would be interesting to just change that equilibrium a bit and perhaps give some more freedom. We had to stop active suspension because of the aerodynamics, not because active suspension itself was a problem. It would be nice to get a different equilibrium in the equation, one day.

I think you've got more opportunity to find more partners in the business if there's some relevance to it. It is so specialised, or seems to be so specialised. It would be good if we could have those hooks that we get people involved in Formula One in lots of different areas, so manufacturers can justify even more their involvement in Formula One because they're getting not only branding but direct technical benefit or gains from what they're working on in Formula One, so the cost of that technology gets spread into their organisation. What we learn in aerodynamics doesn't get passed back to a road car. Our KERS system, interestingly, has got passed to our road car side and the SLS Electric has got a Formula One KERS system in it.

We're keeping the same efficiency objectives that we had with the straight four, (it's) probably be a little bit more challenging with a six but we want to keep the same efficiency objective, and one of the objectives is to increase the targets in terms of lowering them in future years, so that can be the target for the engineers to try and achieve increasing performance or keep maintaining the performance with less and less fuel, which I think is a really interesting challenge. What we don't want is a situation where we have an amount of fuel you race with and you might run out on the last lap. We don't want that. We want measured fuel efficiency, maximum fuel flow rates and try and control it in a way that still encourages interesting and exiting racing.

The bullet points for me:

• The manufacturers have signed an agreement committing them to the new engines and resource restrictions similar the chassis side
• F1 wants to attract more manufacturers and wants to be road relevant (example SLS hybrid system is from F1)
• aerodynamics are too dominating in F1 and more emphasis should be given to things like active suspension
• The fuel flow restrictions will be harder to achieve for the V6 than for the I4 (V6 not so fuel efficient)
• The targeted fuel flow restrictions will not be increased (meaning power will be lower)
• The 2014 targets are just the start. Fuel flow will be reduced successively over the coming years