F1 and Turbos

[Catho]

Hey everyone,
hearing some rumours that F1 wants to switch to downsized turbocharged engines, I was wondering in what respect F1 turbocharger differ from production car turbochargers. What turbocharger innovations would you like to see in F1? Ceramic wheels? Sheetmetal housings? Any crazy ideas?

Catho

 

[thruthefence]

"Aluminum embedded with Si-Ca (also know as metal matrix composites)"

Is that like the Chebby Vega?

 

[MikeHalloran]

Vegas were made of iron oxide with a little iron mixed in.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[4SFEDFOUR]

Back to the original q... I'd like to F1 develop and perfect (so the aftermarket can run with it) the electric assist turbo.

 

[CRF339]

As a form of anti-lag technology?

 

[yoshimitsuspeed]

You wouldn't want aluminum on the turbine side.
Aluminum anneals around 600f and melts around 600 c. EGTs on a highly tuned street car can go over 900 c. I wouldn't be surprised if F1 technology pushed it further than that.
I also don't know of a thermoset or thermoplastic composite that can handle anywhere near those temps. I did a lot of research a while back trying to find a very high temp nonmetallic composite and found some very expensive aerospace materials that could take a lot of heat. I don't remember the max but I am pretty sure it wasn't near that high.
The other thing to remember is the highes temp composites (At leas that I know of) are rated for intermittent high temps.

I would imagine a ceramic turbine wheel would be about as good as you would get. I don't know a whole lot about solid carbon materials though.

I have thought a lot about a thinner lighter turbine housing. I thought about sheet metal and it may be possible but I see downsides as well. If the material is too thin or not rigid enough it could move around way too much with heat and vibration.
If I were to make my own I think I would probably try and machine two halves out of 321 SS or other very high temp metal then weld them together. You can already get cast SS turbine housings which may be a good option with a little PNP work.
One downside is SS can have a pretty high CTE
The compressor housing and possibly wheel could be done in composite. I think gains would be negligible but in F1 eyes maybe worth it.
I'm sure they would have crazy anti lag systems though and at that point who cares about spool time.

 

[1gibson]

SAAB has used electric assist turbos on production vehicles (sorry no links on hand.) Also acts as an alternator.

 

[GregLocock]

Hmm. Google has the same problem with that as you do. No links.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[PJGD]

Not quite the same but not far off: these small turbo-jets have a permanent magnet generator integrated into the turbine shaft between the bearings to act as both starter motor and generator:

http://www.tdi-engines.com/products.php

PJGD

 

[GregLocock]

Sure. The concept has been around since at least 1988, I worked on it then. I just hadn't seen a production version.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[yoshimitsuspeed]

Electric assist turbo seemed silly till you brought up being able to generate energy from it. Also using it as a generator would probably allow you to eliminate the wastegate and limit the speed with the generator.
On the other hand you don't get anything for free and while the generator was making power the exhaust backpressure would go up considerably making the motor work a lot less efficiently. It also seems you may want to alter cam timing if you had too much backpressure to keep exhaust from pushing back into the cyl.

With the added weight and complexity I have a hard time imagining them doing this on F1 but I guess it's possible. Most other anti lag systems require fuel which is a very valued resource where in rally it's not so much.

 

[izzmus]

I thought current "state of the art" rally anti-lag involved large diameter, low velocity ducting immediately pre-throttle, and air injection pre-turbine for spoolup instead of in-manifold combustion.

At least, modern rally cars certainly don't sound like they did fifteen years ago. No more bangbang. I suspect that limitations on the number of spare turbochargers per car/team had a lot to do with that.

 

[NickJ67]

Another method, a one-off as far as I know is used by a gentleman named Nic Mann in his homebuild 4wd hillclimb car.

The 1700 Ford BDA has a turbo, but Nic doesn't like turbo lag so he uses the exhaust from a helicopter APU turbine to keep the turbo spinning - no connection to the piston engine exhaust at all. This is a gross over-simplification, a lot of thought has gone into the system and indeed the whole car.

It goes rather well and the soundtrack is a bit unusual too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11687nVdzdk

Nick

 

[patprimmer]

If you drive your supercharger (a turbo is just an exhaust gas driven supercharger) with another engine, you increase the effective capacity of the cars engine by the capacity of the second engine

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376 for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm

for site rules

 

[gruntguru]

Using a chopper APU exhaust to spin a turbo to compress air to supercharge an engine sounds a bit convoluted to me. The APU has a compressor built-in which could spare some compressed air. If that isn't enough, drive another compressor directly from the APU shaft.

Engineering is the art of creating things you need, from things you can get.

 

[JuricaKalcina]

Using some form of Ceramic material such as (silicon carbide, silicon nitride) for bearings on the turbo shaft would be a good step. Would also be a fantastic material for the turbine. If only there was a way to fix them to the shaft reliably.

Jurica