Electronics installations

[marcush.]

looking at that mess under the sidepods...I think I´m very right that this is not the way to package a car.

Same for any current car in production....It is absolutely no wonder that electronics and electrical defects are the main reason for failures..

[elFranZ]

looking at that mess under the sidepods...I think I´m very right that this is not the way to package a car.

Same for any current car in production....It is absolutely no wonder that electronics and electrical defects are the main reason for failures..

I respect your opinion, but I don't see any mess at all. And I can't remember any electrical failure on F2012 up to now, so we could say that it's working the proper eay.
We're not even sure about what we're looking at, but I'd say there's nothing affecting car's realiability. ECU, for example, is installed almost alone on the other sidepod: less cables, less connections, less components, as you would expect.
That said, having an ugly flying cable is not that matter if it just works as a cable should.

[marcush.]

looking at that mess under the sidepods...I think I´m very right that this is not the way to package a car.

Same for any current car in production....It is absolutely no wonder that electronics and electrical defects are the main reason for failures..

I respect your opinion, but I don't see any mess at all. And I can't remember any electrical failure on F2012 up to now, so we could say that it's working the proper eay.
We're not even sure about what we're looking at, but I'd say there's nothing affecting car's realiability. ECU, for example, is installed almost alone on the other sidepod: less cables, less connections, less components, as you would expect.
That said, having an ugly flying cable is not that matter if it just works as a cable should.

that ugly flying cable is sufferring constant throwing around at +/-4gs in all directions and you have no issue ?
At some OEM I was told the following:What are your worris ,as long as you don´t hear us crying everything is to be considered ok....
I prefer to go along the line:anything you can imagine happening will happen someday.So resolve risks you are aware of or at least get someone taking responsibility for it as early as possible -before it fails first time.

[elFranZ]

Can you please tell what's wrong with this:



Ok, there are lots of things down there, but everything is fixed in place. Hope we're not just discussing of its ugliness.

[marcush.]

it´s cramped up thrown at the sidepod -don´t you think so?
Would you stand in front of this and say:

ah that´s my latest work I´m really proud of the neat packaging i have done and look -the mechanic can barely get his fingers in to fix the damned wiring using some tywraps?..

I say its not neat ,oviously it does the job.

[hardingfv32]

I say its not neat ,oviously it does the job.

I think we lack a feel for the volume that is available for the placement of the major components with the body not in place. I can imagine that there is not many options available for the location of some of the larger items. That priority would come before better cable routing.

Brian

[pitlaneimmigrant]

If you think that's cramped, you want to see what it's like around the pedals/front suspension.

It may not look nice but getting it all into the minimum volume possible normally precludes that, if you were building a sportscar then you have the luxury of targetting a tidier layout, but a lot of effort will have gone into packaging everything in as well as possible

I personally think they have got a lot of equipment into that space, and if it works and is the best compromise of volume/cog/serviceability then someone has done their job

[speedsense]

Damn ESP, where do you get this stuff? Seriously, I would like to know because it's not like this info is hard to find, you just to do a bit of googling.

The two connectors visible at the centre of the image connect to the PB2006 which regulates power and drives the ignition and injection.
The small beige box above that is the LRX310 lap marker receiver
The carbon covers a lot of the other stuff but I can see the FOM power conditioner which powers the cameras. There is another box in there from EFI technology, but I don't recognise it.

More to the point, There are WAY more than 100 data streams on the car, the TAG310 http://www.mclarenelectronics.com/Produ ... t/TAG-310B which is the standard ECU, is limited to 512 parameters, and has over 100 inputs, most of which are used, and may be transmitted in real time.
It most certainly does not transmit in a burst as it passes the pits. There is a network of 5-7 receivers around the track to ensure coverage at all times

Live telemetry and Burst can used together. Broadband and UHF transmission are limited by size of the live transmission (including encryption) and size of data packets, which in turn are determined by sampling rate and number of sensors. Burst data transmission at pit wall passage allows transmission of data that doesn't need to be live. Both can be used in unison.

The TAG310 also has a 1GB memory, which has to last a whole race, so don't expect to see a couple of hundred MB per lab

Mclaren's High speed data logger HSL-500 has 2GB of memory and would receive data via CAN from the ECU, it would be the data logger data that would be sent. Having said that, a lot of sensors outside of suspension and driver measuring, can operate at lower sampling rates of 20hz-50hz, some even as low as 2hz-5hz, Oil temp/pressure ,water temp for instance. Typically the higher sampling is suspension,aero,etc... even here in race "formation of data transmission" don't need to be very high, as analysis for adjustment isn't being done. What might be run at 1000hz maybe be reduced to 100hz for race purposes and transmission of data purposes and storage in the logger for post race download.

There is nothing to mandate that the ECU is inside the cockpit, it's unusual to keep it there due to cooling issues, the SDR (aka ADR) must be at the centre of the car though which places it safely inside the tub http://www.emmotorsport.com/products/sdr

Data loggers themselves do not produce heat, the encasement is ribbed to cool the outside case from the environment "outside" and surrounding the logger. For instance, the higher heat and hot environment of a side pod. The processors used for data logging are not of the quality or intelligence of a desktop PC nor do they have anywhere near the work load. Nor do they need to be.
It actually would be better for the logger to be inside the driver's area (and cooler environment), but packaging and wiring prevents it and the logger is designed to take the environment, up to a point.

[marcush.]

ribbed to cool from the outside environment?

you think by putting ribs on a case you could prevent the inside of the case is getting as hot asits surround ?
thermodynamics don´t work like that.

with the water and oil temps in the 130 to 140 °C area -you don´t want direct contact of anything with things connected to rads and coolers.
Question is how hot will those inlet ducts get-you can clearly see the rads are rubber mounted to those ducts so the heat transfer is not that easy..
Most of the electronic boxes are specified to fairly low temps only -under 100°C so you have not much choice where to put them as downstream of the rads you will inevitably reach temps well above 100°C no matter how much gold foil you happen to apply.
I´d think the tub will heat up as well fairly quickly with large portions of the surface are licked by hot air or fluids .

[speedsense]

ribbed to cool from the outside environment?

you think by putting ribs on a case you could prevent the inside of the case is getting as hot asits surround ?
thermodynamics don´t work like that.

No not what I meant, but rather dissipate heat away from the PCB's inside due to exterior heating (the environment the box is sitting in). A heat sink for the case to "slow" transfer of heat to the internals.
There are some people who believe, incorrectly IMHO, that the "ribbed case" is to dissipate internal heat caused by the electronics rather than the real reason, heat transferring to the case from outside sources.
IE... a race car coming to a halt after running and the side pods and engine bay becoming "ovens".

with the water and oil temps in the 130 to 140 °C area -you don´t want direct contact of anything with things connected to rads and coolers.
Question is how hot will those inlet ducts get-you can clearly see the rads are rubber mounted to those ducts so the heat transfer is not that easy..
Most of the electronic boxes are specified to fairly low temps only -under 100°C so you have not much choice where to put them as downstream of the rads you will inevitably reach temps well above 100°C no matter how much gold foil you happen to apply.
I´d think the tub will heat up as well fairly quickly with large portions of the surface are licked by hot air or fluids .

Thickness of the carbon plays into this and side pod panels tend to heat first as they are thinner, and cool faster with air flow. Thus if the car is stationary for very long, the enclosed panels are like an oven,even an engine bay with all it's heat retention wraps, will still migrate hot air to the side pods.
Putting a bare hand on a side pod, you will get burned quickly .
The internals of ECU's and Loggers have become quite rugged. With surface mount technology, PCB boards don't need to be twice or three times as thick (vibration reasons) and vibration mounting of the boards to the casing, don't need to be as beefed up. Though they still need to be water/fluid resistant, heat resistant, impact resistant, RF noise resistant. The casings are enclosed for these very reasons. The hotter the casings get, the greater the chance of melting the internals, thus the ribs to help transfer heat away from inside and cool the case quicker with air flow.

[Paul]

Ribs increase surface area, and that works both ways. If environment is hotter than the heatsink, it will heat up faster with more surface area. To insulate internals you would want thicker walls, maybe a sandwich with vacuum, like a thermos. But then internals will start cooking themselves, so as always, it's a compromise.

[marcush.]

you are claiming wild things there...
vaccum definetly works very well and youi could always run the kers colant flow throu there or drink bottle... or discharge the fire extinguisher ...
seriously ,with the insulation we see on those cars it´s almost everything aimed at reflecting radiation (so the energy still is there ,ambient temp is the same or higher)
reading the specs of TAG electronic boxes we always see max temps specifies well below 100°C so my guess is these boxes are seeing life threatening temps more than once during a weekend...so they have a very short lifespan ..rule:every 10K more is halving the life expectation...

[elFranZ]

I managed to find this (sorry for the bad quality):



And this:



Thermal imagery of RB7 and Car X. As you may note, the lower inlet zone is among the very few areas in the car approaching the definition of "fresh", in relative terms.
If asked to install those components, having enough volume, I'd place right there.

[marcush.]

I do not debate the facts here .the radiator inlets are meant to catch fresh air at ambient temp and so this area is an obvious choice for putting temperature critical components.
Surely I would investigate the possibility to use the tungsten ballast blocks as heat sinks as at least this would avoid any peaks in temperatures at the cost of a slightly higher average temp if anything.at zero cost.Pretty sure the electronic boxes live near those lumps anyways...that´s a thermal mass of 20kg so it´s considerable.

[Jersey Tom]

it´s cramped up thrown at the sidepod -don´t you think so?
Would you stand in front of this and say:

ah that´s my latest work I´m really proud of the neat packaging i have done and look -the mechanic can barely get his fingers in to fix the damned wiring using some tywraps?..

I say its not neat ,oviously it does the job.

I'd say that's some very good packaging actually.

Good packaging does not necessarily mean that you have to be able to easily get at each and every wire. Not about servicability. And if that were the case and there was something wrong with the harness... most obvious and easy solution would just be to swap the harness out rather than dick around forever on each lead.