Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[godlameroso]

No, there's no variable valve timing or variable lift profile. The valves have to open at the same time every time, for the same amount of time.

[max_speed]

any news in japanese media regarding issues and possible solutions , they are working on ?.

[PlatinumZealot]

Surely the MGUK is driven at the flywheel/gearbox end of the crankshaft where the torsional displacements are much less severe?

As there is no flywheel per se, the inertia at the rear of the engine is low so displacements will not be as low as you think because the node of the first torsional mode shifts towards the front of the engine. Having said that, I am pretty sure Ferrari used a rear driven MGUK at some point. Honda's seemed to be front driven from a few pictures I have seen around here somewhere.

Rules say it must be geared directly to the crank. It's not transmission side, but may be geared via a flywheel or something to that effect. .....

Nothing stopping them from sticking a damper on the MGUK

fwiw I assume the MGU-K is driven at the 'flywheel' end of the crank (and that torsionals are less there) ..... but as M says .....
there is no flywheel - and what we loosely regard as equivalent to the flywheel is the clutch ....and .....
the clutch is in the gearbox ie effectively more remote from a traditional and textbook notion of 'flywheel' position
gearing the K at 3.5x crank speed might not be ideal in this regard
so things are less than clearcut

as others have said .....
crank stiffness is fixed at a conservative level by rules on minimum pin and main journal diameters ? (hollowing could evade this, but why do it ?)
block and head/cambox stiffness is vital (as Honda and Cosworth have found earlier)

Hello tommy. The turbo engine clutch has always on the engine side, looking on photos. I recon there is no need to have it in the gearbox anymore since these engine never really go above 13k rpm. Reading the article posted the 20k rpm NA v8 with those weird firing orders and flat plane cranks, there was a competitive advantage to putting the flywheel and clutch in box to remove as much undamped mass from the crank as possible.

[PlatinumZealot]

I just have a feeling the vibrations are combustion related. Primary cause of engine vibration is combustion. Combustion is like a kick to a spinning wheel... Each kick rapidly accelerating the wheel mass while the stiffness, and damping (including friction) immediately slows it down back. With an irregular firing order the "kicks" are irregular and you have irregular vibrations. Thats for the crank, aux drives and engine structure...
For inside the combustion chamber you can have vibrations from poor combustion that affect the flame spread??? Think of a gas with sound waves in the cylinder acting as a sort of accordion creating sharp compression zones. Could have fringe knock happening? Sort of double tapping the piston?

[anthonyfa18]

http://i.imgur.com/dpqsxR3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/e9WT5xM.jpg
NHK（Japan Broadcasting Corporation） broadcasted on March 24 about Honda F1-PU

http://i.imgur.com/nvJXjkS.jpg
On the dyno test, at HRD Sukura,
Ｗhen the number of the revs of their engine was 11552rpm, the revs of the MGU-H was 90168rpm.
and the boost pressure was 3.06bar. The exhaust gas temperature was 935degC.
http://i.imgur.com/QulbkID.jpg
At the upper left meter indicate the engine rev. the upper right meter indicate the engine torque.
Look at the torque of the engine, it was 451Nm(45.98kgf・m) when the engine rev was 11295rpm.
From calculation formula, Honda's ICE power is 46(kgf・m)×11295/716＝726ps
I think that the ICE+MGU-K peakpower become 886HP when I assume the MGU-K 160ps.

I would love to see this video agine dose any one have a new link?????

Also on to the new 2017 power unit let say honda can some how pull a rabbit out of the hat do u think it will make more power then Mercedes

[godlameroso]

I just have a feeling the vibrations are combustion related. Primary cause of engine vibration is combustion. Combustion is like a kick to a spinning wheel... Each kick rapidly accelerating the wheel mass while the stiffness, and damping (including friction) immediately slows it down back. With an irregular firing order the "kicks" are irregular and you have irregular vibrations. Thats for the crank, aux drives and engine structure...
For inside the combustion chamber you can have vibrations from poor combustion that affect the flame spread??? Think of a gas with sound waves in the cylinder acting as a sort of accordion creating sharp compression zones. Could have fringe knock happening? Sort of double tapping the piston?

You very well could be right, and in some ways I'm inclined to agree with you. I like your analogy of legs working on a pedal, because essentially you're right. Humans burn ATP, engines burn oxygen and some hydrogen, but the result is the same.

The dimension of the cylinder, and combustion chamber, much like the pipes in an organ affect the vibrations of an engine, even the intake, and exhaust ports. All of them are flared like trumpets for a reason as well as the valve seats. Don't the variable intake trumpets remind you of a sliding trombone? The exhaust, the turbine, wastegates, compressor, blow-off valves, are like parts of a trumpet themselves. An actual trumpet uses tappet valves just like an automotive engine does. That's why you can tell so much about an engine from how it sounds.

[wuzak]

As there is no flywheel per se, the inertia at the rear of the engine is low so displacements will not be as low as you think because the node of the first torsional mode shifts towards the front of the engine. Having said that, I am pretty sure Ferrari used a rear driven MGUK at some point. Honda's seemed to be front driven from a few pictures I have seen around here somewhere.

Nothing stopping them from sticking a damper on the MGUK

fwiw I assume the MGU-K is driven at the 'flywheel' end of the crank (and that torsionals are less there) ..... but as M says .....
there is no flywheel - and what we loosely regard as equivalent to the flywheel is the clutch ....and .....
the clutch is in the gearbox ie effectively more remote from a traditional and textbook notion of 'flywheel' position
gearing the K at 3.5x crank speed might not be ideal in this regard
so things are less than clearcut

as others have said .....
crank stiffness is fixed at a conservative level by rules on minimum pin and main journal diameters ? (hollowing could evade this, but why do it ?)
block and head/cambox stiffness is vital (as Honda and Cosworth have found earlier)

Hello tommy. The turbo engine clutch has always on the engine side, looking on photos. I recon there is no need to have it in the gearbox anymore since these engine never really go above 13k rpm. Reading the article posted the 20k rpm NA v8 with those weird firing orders and flat plane cranks, there was a competitive advantage to putting the flywheel and clutch in box to remove as much undamped mass from the crank as possible.

I think the point is that the extension served as part of the flywheel.

And that if the clutch is located on the engine, the extension shaft can cause shift issues because of its inertia.

In terms of the current turbos, perhaps remote location of the clutch is beneficial to keep the clutch away from the turbine.

[damager21]

I am not sure if Honda has enough time to resolve all the issues for Melbourne. Season begins next week and they need to manufacture the Aus spec engine and dispatch it by this weekend.

Am expecting a tough weekend where if the engine survives, all laps will be used to learn more about the car and engine. I think that's the approach both McLaren and Honda will have to take till Spain.

Also there is too much talk about vibration issues, I am surprised this was not picked up on Dynos. There are many articles which states that they have still not managed to identify the root cause of electrical problems. They have been using trial and error method of replacing few parts and hoping it solves the issue thereby identifying the problem.

The only ray of hope is that as compared to Aria-san, Hasegawa-san has been more up front in acknowledging the issues and also honest enough to call out the actual performance of Honda engine. The fact that he has mentioned in the past that new engine is more powerful and has capability to match Merc during the course of the season makes me believe that this is possible provided reliability issues are resolved quickly.

Interesting quote on Express
http://www.express.co.uk/sport/f1-autos ... t-problems

"They are trying to build a competitive power unit, but they do not have a Formula One culture," Boullier said.

"They are a big, successful company and they have their own ways of doing things.

"To devise a power unit in Japan is a challenge.

"That is why Mercedes decided to make theirs in England.

"You need to be fast in developing, as fast as F1 moves.

"Process, procurement, both need to be looked at."

The two organisations are contracted to work together until 2024 although there are understood to be a number of break clauses, one coming at the end of the 2017 season.

[FW17]

Mark Hughes:-

Excessive valve temperatures are rumoured to be at the root of the new Honda’s problems. Whether this is inlet or exhaust valves we do not yet know but either way, such an engine would have to be run very far from its potential performance optimum in terms of ignition timing and fuel supply in order to keep the valve temperatures under control. That in turn would mean much less energy for the MGU-h to recover. And the slower end of straight speeds would mean less for the MGU-k to recover. The concept of the hybrids mean that problems are compounded just as gains are.

[toraabe]

Yes!! I remember the volume and the nature of the Honda sound was very different from every other engine. It was a much sharper and louder noise. Why?? Were they using direct injection then and everyone else was not?

https://youtu.be/YPzlOhAWU_Q

If im not mistaken, the japanese engine manufacturers allways produced higher RPM engines, especially i noticed that in cars on the dashboard, the limiters red zone was defined much higher than in european manufacturers cars, right from the smallest cars up.

I see, but because of the fuel flow rules, there is no need to ...

[Craigy]

If IC engine vibrations are causing electrical malfunctions because of poor connector problems, these are likely to be a larger or unexpected type of vibration than have been seen before in McLaren's development.
The electrical connectors the team uses aren't exactly close to cheap or shoddy - just like everyone else up and down the pit-lane they are designed for a harsh environment. They'll likely have been a carryover from previous years in many cases, if not the same design then very similar types.

If the IC motor truly is the cause of these vibrations, I'd like to explore a little of what could cause that. Alonso mentioned that in one instance, he hit a kerb and the car shut off. I doubt this is just a physical hit directly causing a connector to fail (although Redbull/Renault had such problems a few years ago). I wonder if the hit from the kerb directly on the floor is causing a problem directly in the cylinder for the IC motor; if the combustion is already unstable (as is suggested with the very high AFRs these engines spend much of their duty cycle at) - is it possible that a shock to the charge in cylinder itself could cause det?

What's the consensus of what happens to one of these engines if you run it at a 1.9AFR and then hit the thing on the bottom of the block with a sledgehammer? Does it misfire badly enough to damage something?

Is it possible that the dyno testing wasn't being harsh enough on the motion of the motor while running very lean? We know the oil collector problem wasn't simulated - how about the rest of the engine?

Just a thought: the full chassis simulators don't usually have a post on the anvil at the front of the plank, but this car might be causing shocks directly from there into the unsprung chassis during bottoming and consequently exposing the engine to direct shock loads that the block itself might survive in a static load way, but perhaps the various fluids in it aren't behaving as expected (cf. oil tank, potentially the IC gases themselves) - by fluids, I include combustion gases.

How could this be missed? In simulation, CFD products like fluent and A-CFD tend to work a lot better with steady state flow than they do with systems where instability exists, particularly this sort of "take some cycle-based heat engine thing and introduce an element of randomness into it by shaking it like a snowglobe". The random elements are really difficult to simulate properly, they are difficult to reproduce in terms of the introduction of entropy into the system. Hard to find, hard to fix.

The reason I ask about combustion instability in the car is that it fits these reports:

• TJI/HCCI technology being new to Honda in the form of very lean AFRs, which are new and very hard to work with
• the report of a piston exiting the block for Stoffel (at a guess, det damage - obviously potential because of overlean),
• vibrations big enough to damage electrical components
• car shutting down after hitting a kerb for Alonso

Totally different aspect of the thread and more wildly uninformed speculation just for the fun of it:
I like the theories on this thread about interesting top end designs on the Honda; camshaftless valvetrain and so on. If you wanted to make the head smaller, why not just use pushrods?

Another totally unrelated but I think "wild" idea - if the MGU-H was in the top of the block, and is essentially a rotating magnetic field, would you want that to be driven indirectly by other magnetic fields you could incorporate into one of more of the camshafts as well as by the MGU-H?
At an extreme implementation you could potentially use the cam drive as a magnetic version of a cog to spin up the MGU-H, more like a supercharger than a turbocharger (or indeed, as either).
This would be outwith the power transfer rules obviously, but having magnetic fields rotating around the MGU is inevitable, so as an engine builder you could argue that it was obviously always going to happen in some way.
It'd allow well over the K power limit to be recovered into the ES under the short braking events around the lap, if you could do this.

[mattia.bobbo]

I think that many speculation I've read so far only are way too extravagant. Honda might not be the best engine maker in the world, but they're not stupid and many of the problems like hitting kerbs and killing the engine cannot be related.. IMO they were pushing in the dyno and getting good results, then when the engine was put in the car, something changed (like air inlet temp, water and oil temp etc) and now they're here with an engine knocking and blowing up too often. The vibration issue is really what knocking is (vibration and a huge amount of heat). The valve temperature too high is directly connected with knocking, and the blowing of stoffel engine can be related to vibrations+heat. IMO the electrical issues comes from the part where ice and hybrid engine meet, in the mug-k, and possibly as a result of vibrations of knocking

[3jawchuck]

I cant understand how vibrations affect electronic systems and why is so difficult for an automotive manufacturer to solve this.
- vibrations affect connectors?
- cause cold joints to cirquits?
- affect rotating parts of other electrical devices like altenators -mguh?
finally how is possible not to have discovered vibration problems on test beds?

Quite easy to see the vibrations being missed on a test bed. Although it has the same mounting points those mounting points are attached to very solid framework which is then probably secured into a concrete slab. All this would act to dampen the overall level of the vibrations. You then turn around and bolt the engine into a very light although stiff structure, this has a very poor ability to assist in dampening the vibrations. The result is the overall level of the vibrations are higher then what they probably saw on the dyno rig.

I think this sounds very reasonable. With all the dyno testing that they claim has been done, it is very unlikely the problems they are having are anything but forced vibration brought on by the motion of the car. The oil tank problem was a result of being unable to simulate/estimate the effects of motion on the ability of the pump to supply oil to the engine.

I have no doubt Honda can sort these problems out, but by the time they do, how far ahead will the more reliable engines be in terms of power?

[ALO_Power]

It amazes me how much effort people take to try and discredit or put down other people on the Internet. To actually email the HR department at Sakura to figure out who I am, to that person, you need to find another hobby. So to all of those who think I’m a fraud or fake, just believe that I’m the head janitor at Sakura and my nephew is a part-time musubi-maker in the cafeteria. You might as well also stop reading here......

So, mister Wazari with all the respect I have to you and for Honda I'd like to ask you a very simple and straightforward question, a question that I guess all the fans have and I suppose we all deserve an answer after all of these hard and painful years. With all of your honesty, do you think that we should still believe in this project ? I've been extremely positive and ambitious but after this testing I'm getting more and more disappointed and my high hopes get further and further killed. So, do you think that Honda will be able to sort this engine out and make it a proper P.U that can compete others ? Hasegawa told that he's "scared" of the power gap to others. This is an even bigger disappointment since it eliminates all of our hopes and prospects for the future. It gives us the feeling that even after Honda sorts all of the problems, this P.U will still be by bar the weakest and not competitive. So what's your view on the above? Do we still have something to expect? Or a year worse than 2016 and close to 2015 again? I really hope Honda can find their path otherwise this year's opportunities will get scraped.

[fellowhoodlums]

If it has vibrations to do with poor combustion/valve seatings or similar then it had to have been known about on the test rig, no question. It will have been tolerable and planned to be solved through development.

Only when it was fitted and out on track with all it's kerbs/uneveness/g-forces/driver input etc etc that the vibrations went beyond test parameters and consequencial PU failure.