F1 Cars In The Wet - Airboxes

[Belatti]

The purpose of the airbox itself is to take the high velocity airflow coming in and slow it down to create a uniform, high static pressure at the intake runner inlets.

Do you know how big can the intake static pressure be at, lets say, 300 km/h ?

[riff_raff]

Belatti,

I can't tell you what the diffused duct pressure would be in an F1 airbox at 300km/hr, but I understand it's quite significant and helps boost engine power by a substantial amount. The hard part of its design is to get an even pressure distribution across all of the inlet runners.

Technically, I'm sure the airbox pressure has something to do with Mr. Bernoulli's equation

dynamic pressure=1/2(rho)v^2 right?

[Belatti]

Right.

About the even pressure distribution, I recall seeing a picture of a airbox modelled in CDF, but I couldnt find it. I suppose its a difficult task to reach with the same pressure and speeds to the front and rear admission trumpets.

[Krispy]

Here is a video of the Renault F1 engine (or so the title says) running on the dyno (no air box) you can get a good look at the trumpets and injectors there

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2iBbwocYZw[/youtube]

[PlatinumZealot]

Somebody tell me about those injectors!

[Saabjock]

Most air boxes are shaped to allow heavy particles to settle out and not go directly into the engine. The water, by contacting the surface area of the intake, will drain but the air will flow to the collectors since it's lighter... It acts much like the bypass duct in a modern turbofan engine. In that case Water...along with about 80% air, goes down the bypass duct. 20% Air goes into the core, which is all the engine needs to stay running.