2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

All that has to do with the power train, gearbox, clutch, fuels and lubricants, etc. Generally the mechanical side of Formula One.
Liam.Owens
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Joined: 08 Jun 2013, 16:56

2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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I am currently studying A levels at school and am doing an extended project on the technology involved within Formula 1.

I am wanting to understand how the 2014 regulation changes concerning the new 1.6ltr V6 turbocharged engine is more efficient than the current V8. Any Help will be great.

How does a turbo affect the engine efficiency?
How does reducing the maximum revs from 18,000 RPM to 15,000 RPM effect efficiency?

Obviously the new fuel regulations are understandable, the ERS regulation makes simple sense.

Thanks,
Liam.

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abw
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Recommend looking through this (long) thread: http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... f=4&t=9259

Edit: The thread wont answer all your questions, and includes a lot of discussion irrelevant to your topic. But it is a solid introduction and will give you much background. Good luck.

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MOWOG
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Any enterprise that prates about environmental concern whilst flying 2000 tonnes of men, machinery, parts, props and assorted gear around the globe on huge aircraft 20 times a year has a serious misunderstanding of what environmentalism means. :?

In my opinion, that is. :wink:
Some men go crazy; some men go slow. Some men go just where they want; some men never go.

Lycoming
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Bernie shares your opinion. Or at least knows that cutting grandstand ticket sales numbers will do far more for the environment than the new regs are likely to.

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Tim.Wright
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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I think you need to take into account what everyone has touched on here....

The fact that the F1 engines themselves are responsble for a very very tiny proportion of the greenhouse emissions made by the entire F1 industry (the rest being emitted from factories of the teams and supppliers running 24/7 and the costs of flying all this stuff around the world in freight jets). The change is made purely for politcal reasons. To appear more green, and road relevant.

The change of engine formula has undoubtedly increased the carbon footprint of F1 because we have come out from a period of an engine freeze and now we have a handfull of manufacturers running development engines on dynos, running intensive calculations on powerful computers consuming kilowatts of power, employings hundreds of extra people and generally using a lot more resources than if we were to carry on with the current frozen V8's.

If you want to focus on the engine technology, then fine, you will probably see an advantage but you would be really stupid to kid yourself into thinking this change has an overall net benefit to the environment.

Its quite simple... A policitian see's cleaner engines closer resembling production cars, less fuel consumption, intelligent powertrains etc etc etc. As an engineer, I see a massive cost (in money and environmental resources) associated in retooling to produce new engines and powertrains for these new cars, none of which will be any use for anyone outside of F1.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an environmental campaigner, I personally don't care whether F1 is helping the einvironment or not (I'm pretty sure its not). What shits me is that F1, and their partners insist on telling everyone that what they are doing is for the good of the environment when the truth is far from that.

Would certainly make an intersting essay...
Not the engineer at Force India

Tommy Cookers
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Liam.Owens wrote:I am wanting to understand how the 2014 regulation changes concerning the new 1.6ltr V6 turbocharged engine is more efficient than the current V8.
How does a turbo affect the engine efficiency?
How does reducing the maximum revs from 18,000 RPM to 15,000 RPM effect efficiency?
Obviously the new fuel regulations are understandable, the ERS regulation makes simple sense.
Thanks, Liam.
the current engines are the product of 100 years of rules that aim to limit power only by engine capacity (not by fuel quantity)
so they have a very large bore and a very small stroke, to displace 2.4 litres of air as fast as possible ie 18000 rpm
so make more power via this high rpm
than they lose via efficiency (ie fuel consumption) being quite poor, because .....
the large bore and related combustion chamber surface area cause unusually high heat loss to coolant
friction eg from piston/cylinder is similarly high due to these proportions and high rpm
the average fuelling (deliberately allowed by the over-generous tank size) is about 15% more than can be burnt with the available air

the new engine rules require a smaller bore and lower rpm
together these contribute towards reducing the proportionate losses to coolant and from friction
also the rules require turbocharging integrated with electric turbo-compounding
this forces a smaller capacity ie an additional reduction in the proportionate losses to coolant and friction aka 'downsizing'

if there was a reduction in compression ratio necessary with this turbocharged induction pressure
the associated reduction in piston/crankshaft power would be compensated by increased power recovery aka 'compounding'
and the advanced DI will help CR by fuelling only microseconds before ignition
so there would be a significant 'relevant' efficiency gain from this combination (about 20% of the usual efficiency)
but advanced DI and turbocharged downsizing are already here in mass produced road cars
the 2014 F1 is unique only for its power recovery by electric compounding, this gives a gain of about 10% of the usual efficiency
(2014 F1 does not try to recover energy wasted to coolant, this is 'road relevant' according to BMW and GM research)

actually the CR will also remain high because the F1 fuel rules IMO now have unlimited Octane number
and the fuel will also be tailored for best specific energy by weight
efficiency gains from changes in fuel and fuelling should be discounted as not 'road relevant'

BTW thermal efficiency x mechanical efficiency = overall efficiency (aka brake thermal efficiency)
often European sources mistakenly write in English TE when they mean BTE
40% TE is not remarkable, but 40% BTE is
Last edited by Tommy Cookers on 09 Jun 2013, 12:07, edited 5 times in total.

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MOWOG
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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You said what I said, Tim.Wright. Only gooder! :wink:
Some men go crazy; some men go slow. Some men go just where they want; some men never go.

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Tim.Wright
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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What can I say, Im just more betterer with words n stuff
Not the engineer at Force India

Liam.Owens
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Thanks for that apreciate the help. So i understand the environmental impact is a minute difference. But the information is great It really helps.

Is there anything that F1 is currently doing for the environment? stupid question probably considering there industry and aims but any info would be useful.

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WhiteBlue
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Liam.Owens wrote:How does a turbo affect the engine efficiency?
In a nutshell the turbo extracts work from the exhaust gases that would be blown out of the tail pipe and adds it to the drive train. So that necessarily improves efficiency.
Liam.Owens wrote:How does reducing the maximum revs from 18,000 RPM to 15,000 RPM effect efficiency?
TC has commented on that point. Lower revs will reduce friction. You also have to know that the engines will hardly ever run that fast. They will mostly run under 11.000 rpm due to the fuel flow restrictions.
The other sources of efficiency improvements are:
  • fewer cylinders and moving parts -> reduced friction
  • smaller size of moving parts
  • direct injection produces less pumping losses and cleaner burn
  • smaller engine with less weight helps
The most important point IMO is the change of philosophy in the regs. Formula 1 used to be air limiting the power. Now it is fuel limiting. This will automatically improve efficiency by the quest for more power from less fuel. That makes sense as it is what the industry mostly does. So no surprise that it makes F1 better suitable to all automotive manufacturers.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

Liam.Owens
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Once again your reply(s) have been super helpful thanks.

olefud
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Location: Boulder, Colorado USA

Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Liam.Owens wrote: I am wanting to understand how the 2014 regulation changes concerning the new 1.6ltr V6 turbocharged engine is more efficient than the current V8. Any Help will be great.

How does a turbo affect the engine efficiency?
How does reducing the maximum revs from 18,000 RPM to 15,000 RPM effect efficiency?

Liam.
Keep in mind that the efficiency comparison is between racing engines. Efficiency is not the purpose of these engines.
My -not all agree- rules of thumb include;
All other things equal, for a given power output, a larger displacement engine will be more efficient in that friction area and mass- which increase with displacement- are first order parasitic drags- while friction and inertia –which increase with RPM- are at least second order losses. This assumes that both engines will have to pump the same quantity of air for a given power output plus a bit more for each engine’s parasitic losses.

Naturally aspirated engines are more efficient than boosted engines of a given power in that the larger fuel charge of the latter, while producing more energy, wastes more energy in that the power stroke doesn’t have sufficient volume to utilize the greater energy produced. Thus the turbo engine needs compounding to harvest the waste energy. However, as a rule of thumb, a secondary energy recovery is not as efficient as a primary. Also, much of the extra waste energy is used in the parasitic process of generating the inlet pressure. However, the turbo engine will develop more power than an otherwise similar NA engine (the NA will have a higher compression ratio).

When numerous parameters are changed as in the subject engines, a valid comparison is near impossible. The driving motivation is most likely the desire of the people paying the bills to have a racing engine that casts a halo over what the sponsors are selling despite the fact that racing engines have little relevance to road engines.

Limiting only the fuel and/or air flow rate interesting formula would be an interesting formula, particularly if the total fuel was also limited somewhat.

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WhiteBlue
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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olefud wrote:Naturally aspirated engines are more efficient than boosted engines of a given power ....
This is your pet theory again. IMO you are kidding yourself. Any engine racing or road going that has the same power rating will be more fuel efficient if a turbo is used properly. The combined energy extraction from the ICE and the turbine beats the single stage power extraction of the naturally aspired engine. Every generation of race engines that we have compared showed that simple advantage of the two stage design. The turbos of the late eighties were much more fuel efficient than the NA engines that followed them and the 2014 F1 engines will be much more fuel efficient than the V8s they replace. You can see the same effect in stationary power generation. The power plants with the highest fuel efficiency are two stage designs in that particular case with gas and steam turbines combined to two stages. Those plants push over 60% efficiency which is remarkable.
http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en/ne ... -plant.htm
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

simieski
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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Liam.Owens wrote:Is there anything that F1 is currently doing for the environment? stupid question probably considering there industry and aims but any info would be useful.
With regard to the environment Mclaren became F1's first carbon neutral team last year.

http://www.mclaren.com/formula1/inside- ... ree-years/
Thank you to God for making me an Atheist - Ricky Gervais.

olefud
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Re: 2014 Regulation Changes and their enviromental impact

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WhiteBlue wrote: 2014 F1 engines will be much more fuel efficient than the V8s they replace.
A bit of apples and apricots here. Could dumping unburned fuel into the exhaust on overrun have maybe influenced the V-8 efficiency?