gruntguru wrote:turbof1 wrote:The engines will probably need to be strengthened. Remember that we cannot compare this type of machinery to the "turbo era", as back then team run seperate engines even for qualifying. The expected engine endurance has gone up x10 compared to then. The current breed does get much less momentary stress, but has to endure that lowered stress for a much longer time. The engine has to endure a lot more heat and cool down cycles, something not appreciated by metal.
It'll require some strengthening at the very least, and very, very tight managing over the production process and high standard quality control. Even a single hairline in any of the metallic structures could cause a nightmare in the long run.
Sorry but I don't agree. Mechanical stress in engines is primarily inertial, ie rpm related. 20% MAP increase for example might reduce stress safety margins on critical components by less than 5%. Safety margins that are sitting at 100% or more.
My point about the turbo era engines was to highlight the development cycle rather than qualy' vs race engines (even though the difference there had nothing to do with beefing up failure zones in the qualy' versions - it was all about flowing the additional fuel and air and maybe a CR reduction for det').
To quote some numbers we know, the Honda RA167E had 50% more power than the engine that replaced it - the RA168E. Did Honda save significant weight by paring down critical components in line with the reduced power? I don't think so.
Safety margins equal performance losses in F1, either in power output, aero or centre of gravity. For instance, the fia introduced a minimum mass (I believe 125kg) for the ICE to ensure they are safe and reliable enough. Have the manufacturers designed them this way? No, they design these engines to hold out just long enough and shift the remaining mass to the absolute bottom of the engine, keeping as low a CoG as possible.
Same with cooling. Teams just hate cooling since giant radiators block airflow. They'll install just enough radiators and cooling outlets to keep everything working fairly close to the temperature limit.
What I'm getting is that safety margins are very marginal, just enough to barely cover a hot race. The safety margins aren't at 100%. Let's reduce that to 3-4% and we are much closer to the reality.
If you then have for instance a small manufacturer error, something almost impossible to notice, it can escalate very fast into a disaster. One just has to look at Hamilton's 'race' in Melbourne last year.
To quote some numbers we know, the Honda RA167E had 50% more power than the engine that replaced it - the RA168E. Did Honda save significant weight by paring down critical components in line with the reduced power?
Not a fair comparison since the reduced boost and fuel restrictions forced Honda to start with a blank sheet of paper concerning its engine. It was a very conservative approach, of which I'm sure they were able to cut weight by a lot later on. Naturally, since they were allowed to make as many updates as they liked at any time. That's something you can't do anymore. Manufacturers got a heads up on the new engine rules 3 years before introduction, and are only allowed to change half of the PU in the second, progressively freezing the PU over the years. There is no scope to play it conservative as Honda did because of the restrictions on development, so you are automatically starting with much smaller margins.
