Having looked last month at the McLaren Mercedes KERS system, this month we will investigate the use of energy recovery systems in La Sarthe, the home of the Le Mans 24 Hours.
The ACO (Automobile Club d’Ouest, organisers of the Le Mans 24 Hours) currently incorporate the following section into the technical regulations for LMP1 cars in the ALMS and at Le Mans itself (see end of feature).
KERS is currently only utilised in an ACO sanctioned series Read more…
If you’ve been in the automotive industry for any length of time you will by now have the words “higher performance, less weight at a cheaper price” more or less burned into the inner soul of your psyche. Since weight is the ultimate destroyer of any performance improvement, it nevertheless rankled if ever we were to reduce the weight of the power unit by some paltry amount someone always managed to find room for yet one more electric motor in the seat! Be that as it may and despite the extra level of driver (or passenger) comfort afforded, the inexorable search for lighter, more powerful engines goes on. Read more…
Today, we are told, is the beginning of the Low Carbon Age. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age have come and gone while the Fossil Fuel Age, if you believe many of the pundits, is slowly to be phased out. Ahead of us, or so it would appear, lies the future of maintenance-free electric motors and expensive failing batteries. Setting aside the practicalities of how we actually generate this low carbon electricity, I would just like to point out that even as I write there is one fuel that is low carbon, has a higher calorific value than gasoline / diesel and is literally ‘on tap’ in the vast majority of homes Read more…
In previous articles we have looked at how to calculate fastener and joint stiffness, and seen how these values of stiffness can affect the proportion of the working load experienced by the fastener by calculating the ‘load coefficient’.
See http://www.ret-monitor.com/articles/401/back-to-basics-part-2/
The forthcoming article in Race Engine Technology on the subject presents some simple examples of how variations in fastener stiffness can affect the levels of stress Read more…
Some of us have the regular chance to see an engine running hard on the dyno, and in many cases it is visually obvious that there is a lot of heat being radiated from the exhausts. There are many video clips and pictures on the internet showing exhaust systems glowing bright red, especially on very high-speed engines such as found in Formula One. Whilst it is clear that there is a great deal of heat being generated, what to do with this excess of energy is not clear.
The management of this heat under the engine cover Read more…
Don’t you just love modern day IT terminology? I mean it’s so graphic, so descriptive and often without even knowing the purpose of the feature or component, simply hearing the name gives you a pretty good idea. Thus for instance, we have floppy discs which were, at least initially – floppy, and hard discs that are well, – hard! Thus when we hear the term CAN Bus, without fully understanding what might be going on and ignoring the pre-fix, our imagination conjures up pictures of people in a bus travelled up and down a road. At each stage along the way, people get on and off and carry their shopping Read more…
The author well remembers the first time he was given sole charge of overseeing the running in of an engine on the dynamometer of an un-named race engine manufacturer.
The engine in question was the first ever example of a Le Mans Prototype V8 and the author’s role was to do nothing other than warm the engine up on a base map which would be followed by a check over before the real mapping work commenced. Read more…
In the design of crankshafts we have to incorporate counterweighting for various reasons, either for reduction of bearing loads, or to reduce or eliminate primary couples.
Often this is achieved through careful design of the crankshaft and the counterweights are incorporated into the crankshaft. What we aim to do in providing a counterweight is to achieve a certain moment relative to the crankshaft axis. Depending on the configuration of the crankshaft these may or may not be directly opposite Read more…
This month, we continue to examine material choices. In last month’s article, we looked at some of the reasons why people choose titanium as a con rod material. This month we shall carry on discussing titanium and some more closely allied materials.
One point that was covered last month was the effect that the use of titanium has on the proportion of the externally applied loads that the con rod bolts experience. This is affected not only by the magnitude of the external loads (in this case, we are really talking Read more…
As far as threaded fasteners are concerned, there are a large number of coatings which can be applied, and in doing so we are generally seeking to address one of a small number of issues, the main ones being:
Corrosion
- Material incompatibility
- Friction
- Lack of suitable lubrication
In terms of addressing the problem of corrosion, the main Read more…
