2021 Engine thread

[graham.reeds]

Aero is more constrained in LMP1 as they had to homologate the aero packages for the season (iirc there are 4 this season; hi, low, Le Mans and Mexico).

Engines are iterative (unless you are Toyota) with increasing amount of recuperation allowed.

Also RoI is lower than F1 as in the UK -WEC is on a minor obscure channel (MotorsTV) while F1 has been carried by the big players (ITV, BBC, Sky). I suspect that it will be the same around the world which is a shame as WEC sometimes produces better racing.

Finally it isn't wise for Audi/Porsche to get into a spending war as they are part of the same group.

[FoxHound]

I suspect that Audi and Porsche costs are are approaching (or surpassing) those of the bottom end F1 teams. Honda has customer teams in LMP1 but aren't competitive.

Audi and Porsche are each spending more on LMP1 than Mercedes is in F1....

Linkage for that assertion?

Overall spend will be less. But that's not the complete picture.

Mercedes total spend will be more, but their actual cost could well be less. They make around 65 million from selling their engines, with spending in the region of 150 million, but this figure is also inflated due to the design and build of the V6 turbo's in prepaeration for their first season. The money out of pocket spend is around 80/90 million a year to Mercedes for engines.

Financial statements for the German manufacturer's F1 engine manufacturing division in Northamptonshire show that in 2013 it spent £133.9m which is nearly double the budget it had just three years earlier

A further 220 million in prize monies along with equal the equal shares pot, and around 80 million in sponsorships.
So they can go and spend 350 million before it actually costs them anything to go racing.

Audi in the meantime, have a total spend of 242million in WEC(2015) according to racer magazine.
http://www.racer.com/more/viewpoints/it ... -f1-rumors

I cannot get any information on WEC and their prize fund, but given that alot of drivers race for nothing, and that Michelin gives a $1 Million dollar prize to the winner of Le Mans(a notable prize), and that WEC is a rarity on TV in England, Holland, South Africa and Portugal(first hand experience in that) I cannot see Audi getting more than 50/60 Million a year from it.
The cars are also pretty thread bare on sponsorship. 20 Million a year perhaps?
That leaves a 160 million black hole in Audi's budget, which they can offset to showcase their brand in marketing.

Similarly Porsche will have a similar overall cost. Which means the actual cost to the VW(Audi,Porsche)group in in the region of 300 million dollars a year.

Even at 160 million loss each, that's probably around what Mercedes loses or props up the team with each year to be in F1.
Could be less, could be more...but certainly not far off each other.
But VW group lose far more getting 2 brands to race in WEC than Mercedes does in F1, I'll take a sizeable bet on this...

[wuzak]

I suspect that Audi and Porsche costs are are approaching (or surpassing) those of the bottom end F1 teams. Honda has customer teams in LMP1 but aren't competitive.

Audi and Porsche are each spending more on LMP1 than Mercedes is in F1....

Linkage for that assertion?

Racecar Engineering magazine - not on line.

I'll find what issue it was when I am am home.

[Monobloc]

Please no hybrid or full electric. R.I.P. F1 [-o<

[gruntguru]

F1 has been hybrid for several years.

[godlameroso]

Anyone think that fuel manufacturers can craft some magic fuel that's designed to increase CO2 emissions in order to drive more power to the turbine and by consequence the MGU-H? I know it's not enough pressure and temperature, to have completely super critical CO2 but at least exploit it somewhat?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercrit ... on_dioxide

[Tommy Cookers]

if you are thinking of increasing the carbon content of the fuel and so reducing the hydrogen content ........
this would reduce both the fuel's mass-specific energy and its lower heating value
hydrogen's LHV is about 4x the HV of carbon

but plant using sCO2 working fluid could recover from coolant/exhaust heat post-turbine more efficiently and with far less weight/bulk than steam plant

[godlameroso]

Table 1. Critical properties of various solvents (Reid et al., 1987)
Solvent Molecular weight Critical temperature Critical pressure Critical density
g/mol K MPa (atm) g/cm3
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 44.01 304.1 7.38 (72.8 ) 0.469
Water (H2O) (acc. IAPWS) 18.015 647.096 22.064 (217.755) 0.322
Methane (CH4) 16.04 190.4 4.60 (45.4) 0.162
Ethane (C2H6) 30.07 305.3 4.87 (48.1) 0.203
Propane (C3H8) 44.09 369.8 4.25 (41.9) 0.217
Ethylene (C2H4) 28.05 282.4 5.04 (49.7) 0.215
Propylene (C3H6) 42.08 364.9 4.60 (45.4) 0.232
Methanol (CH3OH) 32.04 512.6 8.09 (79.8 ) 0.272
Ethanol (C2H5OH) 46.07 513.9 6.14 (60.6) 0.276
Acetone (C3H6O) 58.08 508.1 4.70 (46.4) 0.278
Nitrous oxide (N2O) 44.013 306.57 7.35 (72.5) 0.452

CO2 is not the only gas that has super critical properties.

They could maybe exploit this during fuel delivery, if the could somehow vaporize the gas it's easily at the required pressure seeing as it only takes ~49bar to achieve super critical hydrocarbons.

[NL_Fer]

Basicly you are replacing the fuel with CO2, how can that be efficient in a total race? I think it is the other way around and fuel engineers are looking at way's to increase the fuel's energy content.

Reducing the amount of smaller molecules like C6H14 and replacing them with larger C10H20 would help, but can also introduce other problems.

[godlameroso]

You're not thinking in broad enough terms

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/4146 ... injection/

of particular note

By raising diesel to a supercritical state before injecting it into an engine’s combustion chamber, viscosity becomes less of a problem, says Anitescu. Additionally, the high molecular diffusion of supercritical fluids means that the fuel and air mix together almost instantaneously. So instead of trying to burn relatively large droplets of fuel surrounded by air, the vaporized fuel mixes more evenly with air, which makes it burn more quickly, cleanly, and completely. In a sense, it is like an intermediate between diesel and gasoline, but with the benefits of both, says Anitescu, who presented his work last week at Directions in Engine-Efficiency and Emissions Research, a conference held in Dearborn, MI.

*This was published in 2009, 7 years ago, who knows what they've been able to make of this since then.

More reading:
http://articles.sae.org/7160/

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi. ... 020591.pdf

Then we can start talking about what's possible when you start combining this with current tech

[Brian Coat]

The supercritical fuel has theoretical benefits for high viscosity fuels like diesel but I haven't seen a practical application demonstrated.

The NASA paper was filed in 1978 ...

[godlameroso]

Yes it's old technology, nothing new under the sun. It actually has a lot of theoretical benefits, not only does it aid mixing, but the change in density could actually improve the efficiency of the turbine itself. The truth is getting close to super critical has some benefits as well, and I wonder if "TJI" partially takes advantage of this phase state.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVV9M_0p6b0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suce6QNkVRI

[NL_Fer]

It seems Transonic Combustion systems inc no longer exists and all the employees i traced now work for other companies.

Also you must keep in mind the F1 PU has to deliver maximum power most of the time and be efficient at the same time. TJI can achieve both goals. For a road car efficiency at low/medium power is important and high peak power for it's size and weight are important.

[second]

I think some of you are looking at the F1 engine package from the wrong point of view (track performance). I don't want to soud rude nor am I trying be smartass when I'm saying that. But when f1 went from the v8s to the current engine packages it was done solely because of "road relevance". I put that in apostrophes because how much road relevance does a high revving hybrid turbo charged petrol engine have? Not much at all really. It has the same words as some real cars (hybrid) but the tech is very different due to the rpms and the way the energy is harvested and consumed. But having the right words makes all the difference.

Therefore the 2021 engine needs to be looked at solely from two perspectives. One is road relevance. It must look like like something a vw, honda or mercedes ceo can sell to their board of executives as something that looks superficially economic. Just so these marques can keep racing in f1.

The other perspective is trend relevance. Marketing. Trying to pick words that sound cool for the average person from the target audience. Not for your average racing fan but for the average person who is not buying a car but a service to move from A to B. That service is not a honda or mercedes automobil but a service that achieves that with self driving electric cars. 2021 we will have self driving cars.

However this is going to work in practice we know couple of things. We still want drivers in the cars so no self driving cars. Full electric we are not there yet. Not unless you are happy going deep into the 4 digits when it comes to the weight of the cars in kilograms. And similarly there are some performance rquirements that need to be met. But we all know weight of the car is not one of those. It is all about the peak hp number. Be that 800 or 1000 horse power. Even if that peak number is only available some portion of the amount of time the driver spends per lap with the throttle pedal on the floor flatout.

One big question mark is the 2017 spec aero rules. If those 2017 rules stay relatively similar to 2021 then we may see a push towards less power (cars too fast) or vice versa (cars too slow). Currently the top speeds are very high whereas the corner speeds are slow. 2017 could reverse due the focus on more downforce. That which could mean that the engines don't really have much say in how fast the cars go in fast corners as it is all about downforce and not about horsepower. So ther might not be push for engine power levels to change so 2021 engine specs could have similar target for power levels as 2014 did.

So what could it be for 2021 using this ideology? The fuel is probably going to be petrol although diesel is an option. Alternative fuels probably won't happen because shell, petrobras and mobil1 and the rest simply don't want to do it. Alternative fues is something that happens through legislation. Not because people choose to buy more green fuels that may cost more money.

Engine size is going to be something like 1.2 litre. Maybe 5 stroke. I think we will go to I4 engines. 3 cylinders is too little. Turbo of course. With a completely non-sensical rev limit like 14k rpm for example. And it will be hybrid. The electric portion of the package will see substantial increase. Getting rid of the gearbox might be a thing as well. Maybe even have another electric motors/generators in the front axle even if at first glance it looks like it won't do much there because of the heavy rear weight bias of the car. But the thing about the current very rearward weight balance in the car is a bit misguided way of looking at it. If you add and electric motor/generator on the front axle the front weight bias will increase as well because you are adding weight to the front axle.

The main trends will be once again significant weight increase and drop in fuel use. Maybe 70kg and 70kg/h for petrol and something else for diesel. And maybe closer to 1000kg for car weight!? Plus the petrol or the diesel fuels in tank. Formula1000 anyone?

The question of performance only enter into the question once the specifics have been chosen by bernie and his corporate buddies so the engineers can start getting the performance out from it regardless of how obese it will be.

I can always dream too so here's what I hope would happen instead:
- get rid of the electric motors and batteries
- increase engine displacement (and fuel flow limit) as much as it is needed to get 900hp out from the ice alone
- increase fuel tank size accordingly
- this would make the cars lighter and more spectacular to drive and watch
- keep all the cost saving requirements.
- this would also be cheaper to run and would allow midfield teams to build better cars when the engines don't cost insane amounts of money

[godlameroso]

Next year the cars are going to blow away anything you've seen thus far. The cars will be at the same level as the 2010 cars to start the season, and may end up surpassing the 2002 or 2004 cars. All with tiny little engines that put out more power with less fuel and more weight than it's counterparts. I think this formula is still in it's infancy, and if there's any change after 2020, they should limit it to maybe increasing the energy per lap from the ERS to 8MJ per lap, and reduce the fuel tank to 80kg. Increase the power of the mgu-k to 180kW, and this will keep roughly the same combined power but will shift the emphasis to the electric motor side.

This way teams will struggle to keep the ERS topped off, and will have more than enough electric power to compensate for the reduced fuel.