5: Understanding a Formula One Car in .NET

Printer Code 39 Extended in .NET 5: Understanding a Formula One Car

the heaviest fuel consumption) Within those constraints, the chassis has to be as compact as possible to keep its frontal area, and therefore its air resistance, down

A Formula One engine operates on the same basic principle as any old petroleum-fired motor It s an internal combustion engine, with a cylinder block, cylinders, pistons and valves The pistons inside the cylinders move up and down, driven by an explosive combustion of fuel and air allowed in by the inlet valves The spent gases are allowed to escape via the exhaust valves The pistons connect to a crankshaft which in turn drives camshafts and those are the things that open and close those valves Nothing new there The radical thing about a Formula One engine is its light weight and humungous horsepower Reconciling almost 900 horsepower with something that weighs less than 90kg may seem impossible, but a Formula One engine does so

Once the engine and chassis designers have agreed upon a general specification and outline of the chassis, 3-D computer-aided drawings (CAD) are made The same raw data that produced the drawings is then used for computeraided manufacture (CAM) Before the carbon fibre tub is constructed, mirror-image moulds are made, and before that can be done, patterns need to be built to form the moulds Blank slabs of a man-made material called Ureol are typically used for this These slabs are machined into the required forms, directed by the CADCAM information The various patterns bolted together form a dummy Formula One tub, complete with nose cone A scanner goes over this, taking measurements, which are compared to the original CAD drawing for accuracy The dry sheets of carbon fibre are laid out over the pattern A resin is impregnated within them This resin releases and bonds under the pressure and temperature of an autoclave, thereby holding the whole thing together in the required shape Holes and recesses are introduced into the moulds by tooling blocks that replicate suspension and engine mounting points With the moulds completed, the carbon fibre is laid up over them, but in a much more complex formation than was used to create the moulds A calculation technique called finite stress analysis will have shown the engineers where the strength needs to be and so extra layers are laid in at the appropriate places Multiple layers mean several stints in the autoclave before the final high-pressure, high-temperature run of around 25 hours Bonded together, the final tub weighs around 30kg

The engine uses very exotic metals and some non-metallic materials too to keep its weight and heat expansion down A Formula One engine relies on speed to get much of its power, with the best of the current engines running to almost 19,000 revs per minute (rpm), about double the speed of the highestrevving road cars How is that possible Well, the engines have to be rebuilt after around 500 miles kind of expensive Any engine can be squeezed for more revs and power if it only has to last such a short distance Current regulations limit the engine size to 3000cc (cubic centimetres), and turbo, or supercharging, is prohibited The engine must have 10 cylinders Four pneumatically-operated valves two inlet and two exhaust feed each cylinder (although up to five are allowed, no-one has found an advantage from this) The pneumatic operation gives greater accuracy at high speeds than conventional valve springs The cylinders are arranged in two banks of five, the banks splayed at an angle to each other to form a vee, hence the term of V10 in describing the layout of the engines Why 10 cylinders and not less or not more The pros and cons are as follows: Engine speeds: The greater the number of cylinders an engine has, the more power it can theoretically produce For a given engine capacity, each cylinder will be smaller the more of them there are; for example, each cylinder in an eight-cylinder, 3-litre engine would be of 375cc whereas a cylinder in a 10-cylinder 3-litre would be only 300cc The smaller pistons inside these smaller cylinders can be moved up and down the cylinders faster The faster they move, the more power they produce Valve area: Having more cylinders means greater inlet and exhaust valve area, which in turn means that more fuel and air can be pumped through the engine That translates to more power Heat expansion: With more cylinders, less energy is lost to heat expansion because smaller cylinders and pistons can disperse their heat easier Again, this means more power On the other hand, higher speeds from more pistons mean more heat is generated Complex, isn t it Frictional losses: These refer to the energy you lose through the friction of one surface against another (in this case, a piston within a cylinder) The more cylinders, the more frictional losses Weight: The more cylinders, the more weight because not only does the engine have to be physically longer to fit in all those cylinders, but each cylinder brings its associated pistons, valves, connecting rods, and so on Fuel economy: Spreading the engine s explosions between 10 cylinders rather than 8 is less fuel-efficient, so with more cylinders comes the need to carry more fuel, making the car yet heavier