Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[godlameroso]

Good call on the wastegate actuator(mr.potatohead) btw, you were right that is a hydraulic/solenoid actuator.

[MrPotatoHead]

Good call on the wastegate actuator(mr.potatohead) btw, you were right that is a hydraulic/solenoid actuator.

The devil is in the details.

[dren]

The silhouette comparison between the 16 and 17 PUs is impressive. The size of the MGUK is impressive as well.

We get a good shot at how small (short) the MGUH is. It's coupled right to the compressor.

The top piece is definitely an oil/air separator based on my katakana skills.

The injectors were moved from the top to the side in 2016.

[bigblue]

Having a Japanese reader would be nice, but i think it might just be illustrating the difference between an active an passive jet-producing pre-chamber. My hunch is Honda is doing a wall guided pre-chamber for 2018, with a piston nipple with grooves ala orange juicer .

I'm not a native Japanese, nor fluent, in fact I'm really bad and anyway stopped learning years ago ! But I can read katakana (the simple angular script), because it's just a transliteration from English (usually). I also somewhat painfully looked up a few of the kanji (the complicated looking script). This won't add much insight because you'd really want the text below the diagram to be translated, and that would take me about a 100 years ... But, for what it's worth, the annotations on the diagram are just what you'd expect.

So, the black box to the right says "prechamber configuration", the boxes on the left say "2 injector type" and "1 injector type" (yeah, big surprise !). The text under the black box is a bit confusing to me, it's something along the lines of "make the ignition components richer (???), ignition quality improvement is made possible" (really not sure about this !). The labels for top-main diagram are injector, spark plug, exhaust port, jet <something>, intake port, for top-inset diagram are injector, spark plug, orifice, pre-chamber. Similar on diagrams below.

Yep, no insight from stating the obvious there. Err, over to someone who can read/write Japanese properly for the text ! (and the correct translation of text below the black box - that one is puzzling me)

Edit : ah, that text is probably about making the ignition parts richer, where parts refers to the combustion process, rather than physical engine parts (components).

[godlameroso]

I would assume it actually means stratification or stratified mixture or something along those lines. Where part of the combustion chamber has a richer mixture(the pre-chamber in this case), perhaps since you can't have two injectors, you have to use one and feed both chambers indirectly, they were having trouble introducing enough fuel into the pre-chamber, so the mixture had to be run at an extra rich level which is why they had such bad fuel economy at the start of the season. Naturally this improved massively as the season went on, despite it not being obvious from a relative performance standpoint.

Always the Honda optimist, I think this is a good thing, they understand and can get the pre-chamber to work, now all that's left is to refine their version of it, to improve the quality of the combustion. Naturally improving the combustion requires a tweak to everything else down and upstream of the ICE as well, though now that their MGU-H should be sorted, I expect good steps from Honda.

[63l8qrrfy6]

After ferrari had their sparkplug failures there was a scabs video showing a passive prechamber plug (from some sort of industrial SI engine). Someone then claimed (can't remember if this forum or some other place) that both merc and ferrari use the same NGK sparkplugs with built in prechamber. There is no doubt in my mind that Honda also use the same component, you know, with NGK being japanese etc.

The way I see it, the combustion hardware is more or less the same for all 4 manufacturers, the only differences being minute details such as prechamber and injector number of holes and orientation.

One thing I find a bit odd though is Honda using 2 fuel pumps, one on each bank. That pump looks very similar to a Bosch HDP pump I used on an endurance engine and a single one is easily capable of providing the required fuel flow. The spring on these pumps is massively over specced and the lobe profiles imposed by bosch are quite poor (high acceleration). Of course any deviation from bosch specs means a voided warranty so I think using 2 pumps as Honda do leads to a significant power loss from the extra torque required to drive the cams. Or maybe they took the plunge and validated their own spring and lobe profile ?

[dren]

Pressure requirement maybe?

[hasika]

Just part of the artcle.

·Because its a racing engine,so the weight and centre of gravity is very important.The RA617H is good in this area.As the reliability improves during the season,the weight increased too.From this point,The RA616H is too heavy and didnt meet ours target .

·The compressor and turbine was in the V bank in RA616H,but the RA617H put the compressor and turbine out of the V,and only MGU-H in the V bank.We can make the compressor bigger and it give us more freedom to design the intake system.With both compressor,turbine and MGU-H in the V bank in RA616H,its hard to place the VIS.But only MGU-H in the V bank in the RA617H,so we can make it simple.The intake system was what it should be in 2017.

·But to get the compressor and turbine out of the V,we found some new problems.To avoid the contact with compressor,we had to design a complex shape for the oil tank.The design it not good enough,the oil will go into the intake.And finally leads to the MGU-H issues.The shape of oil tank and compressor caused the MGU-H issues.

·The RA617H has the Jet Ignition technology as the other three manufacturer.The compression ratio of RA617H incresed 2 higher than RA615H,and 1 higher than RA616H.Its also the reason why we put the compressor out of the V and make it bigger.But how can we keep the A/F in the pre-chamber and still have higher homozygosity(i dont know much about technology things so i dont know how to translate the word 均質性,) in the main combustion chamber. We tried many palces to put injectors in,but we think the layout now is the best.

·The RA617H has less power than RA616H final SPEC at the start of the season,before we introdued the first upgrade.So its a minus start for sure,but the final SPEC has much more power than RA616H. I think we finally started to understand the Jet Ignition technology and we will do more things in the area from now.

·As the rules set the MGU-K can only send 2MJ to ES and the MGU-K can release 4MJ as most in a lap.But there is no limitation for the MGU-H.So we tried extraharvest technology.First,we harvest more energy from the MGU-K,more than 2MJ,then we send 2MJ to the ES from the MGU-K,the rest of the energy will be sent to the ES thourgh MGU-H.As we had many reliability issues with MGU-H this season,so we didnt find good timing to introduce it.We finally tested it in the Belgium GP and we begin to introduce the technology from Monza.

[lio007]

+1
Thank you for your translation hasika!

[Webber2011]

+ 2
Thank you for your translation hasika

[etusch]

·As the rules set the MGU-K can only send 2MJ to ES and the MGU-K can release 4MJ as most in a lap.But there is not limitation for the MGU-H.So we tried extraharvest technology.First,we harvest more energy from the MGU-K,more than 2MJ,than we send 2MJ to the ES as the limitation,but we send the rest of the energy to the ES thourgh MGU-H.As we had many reliability issues with MGU-H this season,so we didnt find good timing to introduce it.We finally tested it in the Belgium GP and we begin to introduce the technology from Monza.

This MGU-K harvest sending via MGU-H to ES part is intetesting
So Honda uses tji.

[Tommy Cookers]

the MGU-K sending electrical energy over 2 MJ/lap to the ES by routeing it via the MGU-H ? - how is that legal ?

what is the form of this activity ?
legalistic electrical fakery or legalistic mechanical fakery (MGU-H/turbo 120000 rpm rotation use as illegal mechanical ES) ?

[Craigy]

But how can we keep the A/F in the pre-chamber and have higger homozygosity (i dont know much about technology things so i dont know how to translate the word 均質性,) in the main combustion chamber.

Just a word on the spelling/translation for non-English speakers;
I think this part is saying "higher homogeneity" - that is to say, more homogeneous: more evenly-spread, more consistent density of mixture in the combustion chamber.

I'd like to thank Hasika for this post too, very informative. I like Honda's honesty with this stuff - at the end of each season they generally say "here's what we did.."

[Craigy]

the MGU-K sending electrical energy over 2 MJ/lap to the ES by routeing it via the MGU-H ? - how is that legal ?

what is the form of this activity ?
legalistic electrical fakery or legalistic mechanical fakery (MGU-H/turbo 120000 rpm rotation use as illegal mechanical ES) ?

I proposed ages ago that the MGU-H could be a form of flywheel energy storage (whether that is a design intent or not, it will store some energy simply by rotating - and it has a minimum mass of 4kg by regulation) -- I wonder if this is part of the solution.

The rotational speed limit for the MGU-H is 125K RPM by the way, not 120K rpm.

[restless]

the MGU-K sending electrical energy over 2 MJ/lap to the ES by routeing it via the MGU-H ? - how is that legal ?

what is the form of this activity ?
legalistic electrical fakery or legalistic mechanical fakery (MGU-H/turbo 120000 rpm rotation use as illegal mechanical ES) ?

Afaik 2y ago some people here proposed that using such energy routes is partly the secret of Mercedes domination