Horsepower vs Torque vs Revs

[Scotracer]

If you went with that regulation the only variable would be fuel consumption. The teams would gravitate towards the most economical solution.

I say just a fuel limit and see what power they can get out of it. Whilst you may get similar layouts between cars, at least you know the engineers have pushed it as far as it can go...isn't that the full point of F1?

[xpensive]

As I am not sure that I have paid perfect attention here Scotracer, do you imagine some sort of weight of fuel per timeunit control (g/s) to the injection system, or just a limitation of fuel taken on board, like during the old Turbo-days?

[WhiteBlue]

An energy budget can be very frustrating for the drivers. They know they have so much more power, but they cannot use it. Restricting the fuel flow is the better solution but it would not adress the current dilemma how to equalize the frozen engines.

[Ciro Pabón]

Look, allow me to introduce Ciro's theory of Why Engines Are a Dead Alley (WEADA).

Once upon a time a lightweight, powerful engine was a dream. People actually had to use their feet to walk to the grocery store. Then, cars were invented, mainly for racing.

After many years, many laps and a lot of champagne thrown into the air, humankind ended with a lot of memories, a few crashes and drivers killed by the dozen, and light engines.

Today's engines are marvels of power, that weigh less than you. You can pack several hundreds HP in 50 kilos.

Actually, they're so light and powerful that they can knock you out in a fast curve, just by their raw power. If we wanted to have a 2,000 HP series, it would be feasible, but you'd need robots to drive the things, because regular humans would have their bejeezes scared out in no time.

You can say that some people have NO bejeezes. I don't think so. The fact is that engines are over-developed nowadays. They're more powerful than what is needed: they're more powerful than what a human being can take. They're also becoming obsolete at an astonishing pace.

For starters, they're extremely efficient at using a fuel that is finished: oil.

It's like having an entire industry using whale oil in 1930: it's a dead evolutionary pathway.

In a few decades, people will watch F1 cars and they will say: "How quaint! They even used gasoline!". Of course they will add: "And those contraptions were what made a mess of the Earth. BTW, many thanks, Grandpa".

And that's pretty much it. Who would invest money on a thing that's clearly in its final gasps? Morons, that's who.

Now, can we go back to the topic or do you wish to create a new one? I've never seen an easier to answer question: HP = Torque * RPM

[xpensive]

I believe that this is all down to what you feed the engines with, what we have discussed here, before being so brutally interrupted by a representative from reality, would work equally well with Methanol, Ethanol or even Propane-gas.

[Ted68]

Close, Ciro, but you forgot a step.

HP=tq*rpm/5252

[WhiteBlue]

He is right in one way and wrong in another. The symbol of life is the circle. In nature you have organic cycles while the cosmos burns out its energy in an eternal path maximising entropy. on the way those cyles we know as days, years, centuries and milennia are only heartbeats compared to the passing of universal time but for us humans in our infinitesimal small perspective they should be pretty much identical or we gamble with fate.

In this I agree with Ciro, that we are currently doing a bad job as we are plundering a readily accessible depot which took millions of years to build up. We are going to deplete it in two centuries, it looks like. This is certainly unsustainable and the job at hand is to get back into the cycle of live without a collaps of the civilization that we know.

I do not believe that access to cheap and unlimited energy is the key to global happiness and wellfare. Ecosystems have prooved to be pretty unstabile against huge energy release and the idea of being able to release unlimited energy into ecosystems scares me like nothing else.

Using renewable sources and stopping the waste are the things that take priority over getting energy from anti matter or fusion. I am not a religious guy but I believe that the erroneous way of nuclear fission has been clearly demonstrated by the unacceptable environmental risks that is symbolized in the man made element of plutonium. It is the deadliest poison ever to enter our planet. We bring it artificcially into existence and it takes 200.000 years to have the stuff just loose half of its damage potential. We should stop the hybris of thinking we can ultimately control something like that over a time period that will span 10.000 times the duration of written human history.

In this situation everything that supports energy efficiency and reduction of fuel usage is extemely positive. Motor racing is about the excitement of using technology to be the first to finsh. It is nowhere written that the evolution in racing must be a stupid cycle of maximising power with the consequence that power is soon enough cut again by regulations to keep things humanly safe. In this I agree with Ciro as well. We know that the current cars ar exciting so we should freeze the power and direct the competitive advantage towards realizing a bigger and bigger regenerative shares of the total power bill. Whoever does it best should finish first.

[Ciro Pabón]

Close, Ciro, but you forgot a step.

HP=tq*rpm/5252

No, Ted, I did not. I normally don't use imperial units, altough I confess I have a complete set of tools in inches and one in mm (I have a Pontiac and a Nissan) and I know how many feet there are in one mile and how many pints in one gallon.

If you measure the torque in Newtons-m and the angular velocity in radians/s you get the power in watts, because a watt is one newton-meter/second. That's what God intended us to do... I hope Obama does something about it: US is the last bastion of fathoms, acres and other repulsive units.

I believe that this is all down to what you feed the engines with, what we have discussed here, before being so brutally interrupted by a representative from reality, would work equally well with Methanol, Ethanol or even Propane-gas.

Oops. Well, you can post whatever you want. Look at WB last post: how the circle of life is related with HP and torque beats me... (sorry, sorry, it's kind of a joke).

However, I can too post whatever I want. So, go back to torque or I'll annoy you even more. You people behave like forums were made to speculate wildly instead of summing up the dry facts of life. Please, remember what Patrick Henry said: "give me the proper MKS equations or give me death!".

[Belatti]

That's what God intended us to do... I hope Obama does something about it: US is the last bastion of fathoms, acres and other repulsive units.

US acres or UK acres? UK gallons or US gallons? CV or HP?

When will they admit metric units are way better intuitive and practical?

Back on topic:

How we will calculate torque, power and rpm when Mr. Fusion, a banana and a can of beer is what makes our beloved F1 cars to move?

[Ciro Pabón]

Easy. We all know that the flux capacitor uses 1.21 gigawatts. At 30% efficency, we get roughly 300 million watts at the output.



That's like 400.000 HP, a huge improvement over the 130 HP the DeLorean used to have. It's half the power of a Saturn V, the rocket that pushed Apollo crafts to the moon.

A DeLorean will give you 5500 rpm. So, the torque is:

300.000.000 watts * 60 seconds / 5500 rpm = 3.2 million N-m

I think we should check the crankcase bearings once in a while.

Tyres could be a problem: the time I can estimate for 0-100 kph is a little over 0.002 seconds and the force from tyres to the pavement is around 1500 Tons. You have to be gentle with that throttle.

HANS helmets should improve: acceleration is around 1400 G. Now we know why the "Danger" sign.

[ISLAMATRON]

Mr Fusion + the flux capacitor.... the fisrt KERS system!


I dont think they routed the power thru the tires... especially when they were flying.

[xpensive]

Righ, but exacty how much is 1.21 "Jiga" Watt, which the danger-sign is referring to?