Carbon Block?

All that has to do with the power train, gearbox, clutch, fuels and lubricants, etc. Generally the mechanical side of Formula One.
tok-tokkie
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Joined: 08 Jun 2009, 16:21
Location: Cape Town

Re: Carbon Block?

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outer_bongolia wrote:Also another issue will be thermal expansion. The carbon section will have a different expansion coefficient than the metal. It's usually really hard to match multiple materials in the cylinders and pistons.
Just a sideline to your comment.

Interestingly carbon fibre has incredibly low thermal expansion. I have a project to make a pendulum clock using modern technology. I wanted to use carbon fibre for the pendulum. When I came to design the thermal expansion correction I found that it is much lower than that of invar. Invar is the special metal alloy that has low thermal expansion that was developed for pendulums (& the thermal expansion is critically dependant on having precisely the right ratios of the metals, outside that the expansion ratio increases rapidly).

riff_raff
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Joined: 24 Dec 2004, 10:18

Re: Carbon Block?

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ringo,

CRC pistons, or aluminum pistons with a ceramic thermal barrier on the crown, don't work well in a high-compression, spark-ignited gasoline engine precisely because they don't transfer heat well. Big bore, high-compression racing engines usually employ a combustion chamber geometry that has lots of squish area around the bore periphery. The "squish band" prevents detonation in the outer end gases by transferring heat from the thin layer of intake charge at piston TDC into both the cylinder head deck and piston crown surfaces. This end gas heat transfer process only works when the cylinder head deck and piston crown surfaces have high thermal conductivity and low temperatures. Thus what you really want for max power, like in a racing engine, is a piston and cylinder head material with high thermal conductivity, in order to reduce the chance of detonation.

Thermal barriers on piston crowns, cylinder heads, and valve heads have been tried. The result was that the engine suffered from detonation, and the thermal energy that was normally lost into the oil and coolant instead was simply sent out the exhaust pipe, and did not produce any significant power gains.

Another problem with thermal barriers on piston crowns, or pistons made of low thermally conductive materials like CRC, is that the additional heat load forced into the cylinder liner surface around piston TDC is enough to cause the oil film on the liner wall to flash, and thus will cause scuffing of the piston compression rings.

Regards,
Terry
"Q: How do you make a small fortune in racing?
A: Start with a large one!"

autogyro
53
Joined: 04 Oct 2009, 15:03

Re: Carbon Block?

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Hmmm, I wonder if it is possible to make a block from a powdered metal and resin composite and then use electro magnetics to transfer heat?

Rastech
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Joined: 27 Oct 2010, 00:25

Re: Carbon Block?

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Carbon fiber engine blocks and better have been done already. How you may ask? Space i.e. Zero Gravity. Once you get up there all types of things can be done. Ask any engineer or chemistry buff what is possible in that vacuum! It gets particularly interesting when you start colliding atoms at several thousand miles per minute. And it wouldn’t cost very much over the long term to mass produce these zero-alloys or “0lloys” pronounced simply as‘O-lloys.’ Several unmanned rockets will have to be launched into space carrying payloads of pieces for automated factories. Each part of the factory will sense where it is supposed to fit with the other components that arrived. And voila! There it is. A space factory built very close to the sun. This factory will also send drones even closer to the sun for melting what ever needs to be melted.

The first thing this factory will produce is some super alloy for building a sort of maglev space ramp. From this ramp we launch materials into space at very high speeds to be collected by drones. This is very cost effective; however these new materials possess properties that will render some industries on earth obsolete very quickly. Hence, we probably won’t see much of what is really possible in 2010 for another fifty years or so. That is unless we sneak into places we aught not to be. Remember, the stealth bomber is already over thirty years old. Yes thirty… it was top secret for quite a while there. Do you think they were showing us their very latest technology during the first Gulf War? And now with these F-15 Raptors and such? I think not. They keep the bulk of it out of our sight.

I can’t prove anything said here so don’t take my statements to heart if you still think such advances are impossible as far as you know. We were all taught to think that way so please don’t be offend or think I’m just being silly. Car racing not only has the potential to go way beyond where we are now but to save lives as well from accidents. And I mean every racers life. But that is another story readers will get a chance to categorize as BS… on this post.

P.S. for those who want to know if the space O-lloys won’t be contaminated with radiation from space. The answer is: Yes, temporarily. There are other space made materials which will attract the alpha particles, neutrons, electrons, photons, and other particles which emanate from the atomic nucleus as a result of radioactive decay and nuclear reactions. Again, I can’t prove it however if you do a little research you will see it is not that impossible. Hey, try going back fifty years ago with your I-Phone, a flat panel HD TV and your laptop. You might get burnt at the stake for being a witch… lol.

I mean, twenty five years ago it was impossible to do most of what you are doing now. Ant if you told anyone it was going to happen back then they would just laugh at you.

Remember when there was no way to affordably make a video camera any smaller and lighter than sixty or seventy pounds? Well I think I have beaten my point to death, thanks for reading. Cheers.

autogyro
53
Joined: 04 Oct 2009, 15:03

Re: Carbon Block?

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Low gravity space factories are certainly a useful but expensive source of future materials. It may well be possible to produce a carbon based ic engine block but why bother applying such technology to inefficient and obsolete internal combustion engines?
...

... Space factories would be far better served developing better magnets and other materials for electric traction.
Last edited by mx_tifoso on 27 Oct 2010, 23:55, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: removed off topic comments.

philgarraway
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Joined: 10 Oct 2010, 01:00

Re: Carbon Block?

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Carbon fibre is never used on the block itself. In my racing team we have however used it on things like the air intake and the exhaust manifold, even on things like the gear shift (however this last one did not work as it broke in a race)

It has been tried however the thermal properties of carbon fibre are very restricted, Yes it has a great yield strength(elastic limit), Young's modulus, but he maximum serviceable temperature is ONLY 220 degrees C.

Alot of F1 teams tend to run with titanium alloy or aluminium nitride's. This is for two reason, one being then can run at far great temperatures (typically 1000-1700 degrees C), they are still very strong, and incredibly lightweight
Proverbs 3:5-6

jmw
jmw
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Joined: 21 Dec 2010, 14:59

Re: Carbon Block?

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Carbon wrote:A question to the engineers on this forum. Is it possible to develop a carbon fibre engine block? I know there are iron, aluminum and magnesium blocks used in production cars and race engines, and carbon is used in gearbox housing, what are the limiting factors for using the same material in a block? Has this been experimented with at all?

oh one more thing

um cooling why not build a larged sleeve with the water jacket built into it so it doesnt come into contact with the block

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humble sabot
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Joined: 17 Feb 2007, 10:33

Re: Carbon Block?

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I don't like the idea of conrods, remember you need threads in there. and you have to transmit compressive loads, and my feeling is that you'll have to make them thicker, meaning more windage, saping power again. ceramics maybe, but with carbon, even crc, i'd be hesitant.
the four immutable forces:
static balance
dynamic balance
static imbalance
dynamic imbalance

kutch
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Joined: 13 Jul 2011, 17:19
Location: NY

Lightweight Engine Uses Carbon Fiber Composite

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http://www.tohotenaxamerica.com/


Composite Castings LLC (CC) announces the launch of its new, lightweight, carbon fiber composite, 4-cylinder engine blocks. This novel engine block design was developed by Matti Holtzberg, President and founder of Composite Castings, based in West Palm Beach, Florida, USA. Extensive research resulted in the selection of Toho Tenax America's Tenax® brand carbon fiber as the reinforcement for the base epoxy resin.

The resulting high performance compound is molded into the finished engine block profile using CC.s proprietary molding process (patented and patent pending) that uses low cost tooling and provides for faster cycle times compared to conventional CFRP molding methods.

The new engine blocks are 45-50% lighter in weight than a comparable aluminum block. The weight saving is a significant competitive advantage in the performance engine business and will attract a lot of interest from the worldwide automotive industry where weight is so critical, particularly in hybrid cars. A composite block is cast to a net shape, which: eliminates secondary machining; significantly reduces NVH due to the relationship between fiber and resin; does not corrode; and represents a huge reduction in its carbon footprint because there is no metal to melt.

Also, in comparison to die casting, the tool cost is 50% less and the tool life is 5-10 times greater. The first block that CC is casting for the performance engine market is an after-market specialty engine, which can be an alternate to the popular Ford Duratec/Mazda MZR inline 4. The carbon fiber composite block weighs 20# (9.1 kilos) LESS than the stock alloy block.

Looking further forward, an entire range of 4- and 8- cylinder engine blocks is planned for motorsports as well as OEM automotive, truck and marine applications.

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PlatinumZealot
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Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 03:45

Re: Carbon Block?

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Imagine an F1 car with carbon block!
🖐️✌️☝️👀👌✍️🐎🏆🙏

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Holm86
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Joined: 10 Feb 2010, 03:37
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Re: Carbon Block?

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n smikle wrote:Imagine an F1 car with carbon block!

Wouldnt make any sense would it?? Since there is a minimum weight limit.

Could be cool if motorbikes could use such an engine since it would give a great weight saving because the engine is a big procentage of the total weight of the bike.

Formula None
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Joined: 17 Nov 2010, 05:23

Re: Carbon Block?

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Since certain parts will still need to be steel, I imagine they would end up resembling CF gearboxes in some ways. A mix of CFRP & metals. Would look AWESOME, is what I'm getting at.

Image

^F1snake's box
Holm86 wrote:
n smikle wrote:Imagine an F1 car with carbon block!

Wouldnt make any sense would it?? Since there is a minimum weight limit.

Could be cool if motorbikes could use such an engine since it would give a great weight saving because the engine is a big procentage of the total weight of the bike.
Seems like the teams are always taking weight out of the car wherever they can, so they can add it back as ballast in any location they want, to fine tune weight distribution.

Saribro
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Joined: 28 Jul 2006, 00:34

Re: Carbon Block?

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Formula None wrote:
Holm86 wrote:Wouldnt make any sense would it?? Since there is a minimum weight limit.
Seems like the teams are always taking weight out of the car wherever they can, so they can add it back as ballast in any location they want, to fine tune weight distribution.
In this case, not so much. In addition to the minimum weight, there's also a limit on engine CoG location, so they can't just move the engine weight around willy-nilly.

Formula None
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Joined: 17 Nov 2010, 05:23

Re: Carbon Block?

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True, forgot about those rules. Can't see them abandoning them in the new V6 formula either.

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Holm86
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Joined: 10 Feb 2010, 03:37
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

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Formula None wrote:True, forgot about those rules. Can't see them abandoning them in the new V6 formula either.
No FIA dont encourage innovation unfortunately.