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The physics of Formula One
By Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
The Sydney Morning Herald
Friday March 5 2004
A Grand Prix car elevates engineering to high art. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki explores the mechanical and computing extremes of the billion-dollar sport whose 2004 season starts this weekend.
There is a reason F1 cars look as if they're glued to the road -- they virtually are. A Grand Prix racer generates so much downforce at 160kmh (100 mph) that it could drive on the roof of a tunnel.
The downforce, which is considerably more than the car's weight, makes the car stick to the road so well that through corners the driver can be subjected to forces of 5 Gs -- five times the pull of gravity -- where their 70-kilogram (154 lb) body suddenly weighs 350kg (770 lbs). Five Gs can stop a driver breathing, and make his head weigh 25kg (55 lbs).
Aerodynamics is, in general, the key to success in this sport. The 10 F1 teams spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year in a bid to create maximum downforce and minimal drag. Wings are tailored for each race, and "barge boards" fitted to the sides of cars help shape the airflow and reduce turbulence.
Tight circuits such as that at Monaco, which is considered "slow", demand a very aggressive wing profile. Cars can run up to two separate "blades" on the rear wings. On high-speed circuits such as Monza, however, the cars are stripped of as much wing as possible to minimise drag and raise speeds for the long straights.
At full blast, the fuel pump delivers fuel faster than the water flows from your kitchen tap. The drivers pilot these vehicles at more than 300kmh (186 mph) while semi-reclining in a tub made of exotic carbon fibre, just centimetres off the road. Acceleration from 0-160kmh (0-100 mph) is achieved in about 3.5 seconds; the car can be quicker in the 100kmh to 200kmh sprint (62 mph to 124 mph), because the downforce created at speed aids grip, so reducing wheelspin.
That means in the time it takes a high-powered sports car to hit 60kmh (37 mph), an F1 car will be doing 150kmh (93 mph)
The drivers have to be supremely focused, and maintain this concentration for the two hours it takes to cover the 300-odd kilometres (186 miles) of a race.
A top driver can feel a variation as tiny as 0.5 percent in front-to-rear aerodynamic balance and sense a change in the car's behaviour if front ride height is raised by just a millimetre.
F1 drivers are serious about fitness; they have to be. Their steeds can brake from 185kmh to a halt within 80 metres.(114 mph to a stop in 262 feet). Jacques Villeneuve once described the braking force as "like having someone drop a brick around your neck".
The thinner and lighter the driver, the better the fit in the tiny cockpit. All the top drivers train like elite athletes to endure the rigours -- and the high temperatures -- of a race. Muscle strength is critical, especially in the neck (even with the compulsory use since last year of the Head and Neck Support system, or HANS, which reduces the force applied to the neck by up to 86 percent).
Between races, practice and the demands of corporate promotion, drivers undergo vigorous short-session training and psycho-physical therapy programs devised by the teams. Toyota, for example, asks its F1 drivers to take food intolerance tests and complete personality questionnaires in a bid to find each man's ultimate "round-the-clock" training regime.
The driver's blood pressure can rise by up to 50 percent during racing and he (there hasn't been a woman in an F1 championship race since 1976) loses up to three litres (over 3/4 gallons) of fluid in a race. His heart rate can reach 190 beats per minute on the starting grid and exceed 200 during the race. The pulse rate of a healthy young person is typically about 60.
Each team starts the season in Melbourne this weekend with two cars and at least one spare. Teams in contention for the championship will ensure each driver has a spare car.
The maximum displacement of a 10-cylinder F1 engine is 3.0-litres and it cannot be supercharged or turbocharged. Each engine weighs about 100kg (220 lbs), but its precise specifications are determined by the demands of the circuit at which it will perform. The car must weigh at least 600kg (1320 lbs) and have four wheels, two of which are steerable, the other pair driven.
The engines produce an astonishing 650kW-plus (over 884 hp) at about 18,000rpm. The average large sedan generates about 150kW (204 hp) at 6000rpm. Previously, peak revs were about 12,000 -- then Renault invented pneumatically driven valves, enabling engine speed to jump to 18,000rpm.
At Monza last year, the BMW engine in driver Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams car peaked at more than 19,000rpm. At those engine revs, the accelerative force on the pistons is nearly 9000 times gravity.
Achieving phenomenal power comes at a cost. Automotive engineering genius Ferdinand Porsche once said that "the perfect race car crosses the finish line in first place and then falls to pieces".
New technical regulations this year, stipulating teams can use only one engine per car per race weekend, have team engineers talking of doubling an engine's life expectancy -- to just 800km (almost 497 miles).
Teams are constantly judging how far the car can go on 1kg (2.2 lbs) of fuel, as that dictates the amount carried on board, hence pit-stop strategies. Race fuel "economy" is about 80 litres/100km. (21 gallons of fuel per 62 miles driven, or a bit less than 3 miles per gallon!) Places can be made or lost in a pit stop, when some 60 litres of fuel (almost 16 gallons) can be pumped into the tank in five seconds.
Teams could once use components of rocket fuel (in the height of the turbo era), but the fuel used now is more like premium unleaded, with octane levels of 95 to 102 but without cleansing elements or additives to aid driveability.
Fuel regulations are tough and, over a racing weekend, motor sport's governing body, the FIA, can take random samples to ensure the specified fuel is being used. It analyses the samples with a gas-chromatograph to identify different-sized hydrocarbon molecules -- the fuel must match molecule to molecule exactly -- in a process similar to fingerprint testing.
Each F1 racer has about 1.5km (almost 1 mile) of wire, carrying data from some 120 sensors transmitting such information as the angle of the rear wing and brake, oil and tyre pressures.
In the pit garages are some 500 metres of cabling for data processing. But only the people perched on the "bar stools" in the pits (race engineers, team principal, technical director and operations man) will be engaged in measuring a car's every function in a race.
A team has 70 to 100 people at each GP. To keep costs down, teams may send fewer staff on the "long haul" from Europe to Melbourne's race.
In each team, about a quarter of the staff work on the engine; most of the rest work on the chassis and assembly. Design of the chassis is an ongoing process - as soon as one season starts, the chassis team is already looking ahead to the next.
Each car comprises about 9000 different components, half of which are in the engine. The body and chassis are made from carbon fibre, which is four times stiffer and five times stronger than steel. The software to integrate the data from the sensors and engine and gearbox management programs comprises some 500,000 lines of code, which takes some 20 man-years to write.
The gearbox can have up to seven speeds. If the timing of the gear changes is off by even a few thousandths of a second, the gearbox will self-destruct.
Using digital replicas of various tracks, teams can test the engine before each race. The milling machines used to make car components can shape the surface of an area of one square metre to an accuracy of 4 microns (0.004mm), which is about 25 times thinner than a human hair.
It takes a lot of money and brainpower to generate this sort of vehicle. The outrageous costs have drawn industry criticism, with F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone arguing that the major players must cut costs or risk extinction.
The top teams -- Williams, McLaren, and constructors' champion for the past five years, Ferrari -- each budget on $400 to $500 million a racing season and employ at least 350 people.
A steering wheel alone costs $120,000 and is made of carbon fibre. Most teams' aerodynamic departments own full-sized (if not, then half-scale) rolling-road wind tunnels and have vast computing power. Ferrari has its own test circuit at Maranello in Italy.
For all that, braking remains a great test of the driver's skill. McLaren came up with a new braking system (progressive electro-hydraulic power brakes) which shortened the braking distance - but it was banned. McLaren also invented a unique rear differential to better handle that awesome power; it too was banned. One engineer estimated that half of his 15-year career had been spent on developing gear that was now illegal.
Under 2004 regulations, fully automatic transmission systems have been abolished, as has launch-control, meaning drivers need to control the clutch themselves for take-off.
The job of the scientist is to discover phenomena that are already there, but currently are unknown to humans. The job of the engineer is creative; to design and build something that has never been built before. You could say that engineering comes closest to art in the design of today's F1 car.
The physics of Formula One
By Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
The Sydney Morning Herald
Friday March 5 2004
A Grand Prix car elevates engineering to high art. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki explores the mechanical and computing extremes of the billion-dollar sport whose 2004 season starts this weekend.
There is a reason F1 cars look as if they're glued to the road -- they virtually are. A Grand Prix racer generates so much downforce at 160kmh (100 mph) that it could drive on the roof of a tunnel.
The downforce, which is considerably more than the car's weight, makes the car stick to the road so well that through corners the driver can be subjected to forces of 5 Gs -- five times the pull of gravity -- where their 70-kilogram (154 lb) body suddenly weighs 350kg (770 lbs). Five Gs can stop a driver breathing, and make his head weigh 25kg (55 lbs).
Aerodynamics is, in general, the key to success in this sport. The 10 F1 teams spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year in a bid to create maximum downforce and minimal drag. Wings are tailored for each race, and "barge boards" fitted to the sides of cars help shape the airflow and reduce turbulence.
Tight circuits such as that at Monaco, which is considered "slow", demand a very aggressive wing profile. Cars can run up to two separate "blades" on the rear wings. On high-speed circuits such as Monza, however, the cars are stripped of as much wing as possible to minimise drag and raise speeds for the long straights.
At full blast, the fuel pump delivers fuel faster than the water flows from your kitchen tap. The drivers pilot these vehicles at more than 300kmh (186 mph) while semi-reclining in a tub made of exotic carbon fibre, just centimetres off the road. Acceleration from 0-160kmh (0-100 mph) is achieved in about 3.5 seconds; the car can be quicker in the 100kmh to 200kmh sprint (62 mph to 124 mph), because the downforce created at speed aids grip, so reducing wheelspin.
That means in the time it takes a high-powered sports car to hit 60kmh (37 mph), an F1 car will be doing 150kmh (93 mph)
The drivers have to be supremely focused, and maintain this concentration for the two hours it takes to cover the 300-odd kilometres (186 miles) of a race.
A top driver can feel a variation as tiny as 0.5 percent in front-to-rear aerodynamic balance and sense a change in the car's behaviour if front ride height is raised by just a millimetre.
F1 drivers are serious about fitness; they have to be. Their steeds can brake from 185kmh to a halt within 80 metres.(114 mph to a stop in 262 feet). Jacques Villeneuve once described the braking force as "like having someone drop a brick around your neck".
The thinner and lighter the driver, the better the fit in the tiny cockpit. All the top drivers train like elite athletes to endure the rigours -- and the high temperatures -- of a race. Muscle strength is critical, especially in the neck (even with the compulsory use since last year of the Head and Neck Support system, or HANS, which reduces the force applied to the neck by up to 86 percent).
Between races, practice and the demands of corporate promotion, drivers undergo vigorous short-session training and psycho-physical therapy programs devised by the teams. Toyota, for example, asks its F1 drivers to take food intolerance tests and complete personality questionnaires in a bid to find each man's ultimate "round-the-clock" training regime.
The driver's blood pressure can rise by up to 50 percent during racing and he (there hasn't been a woman in an F1 championship race since 1976) loses up to three litres (over 3/4 gallons) of fluid in a race. His heart rate can reach 190 beats per minute on the starting grid and exceed 200 during the race. The pulse rate of a healthy young person is typically about 60.
Each team starts the season in Melbourne this weekend with two cars and at least one spare. Teams in contention for the championship will ensure each driver has a spare car.
The maximum displacement of a 10-cylinder F1 engine is 3.0-litres and it cannot be supercharged or turbocharged. Each engine weighs about 100kg (220 lbs), but its precise specifications are determined by the demands of the circuit at which it will perform. The car must weigh at least 600kg (1320 lbs) and have four wheels, two of which are steerable, the other pair driven.
The engines produce an astonishing 650kW-plus (over 884 hp) at about 18,000rpm. The average large sedan generates about 150kW (204 hp) at 6000rpm. Previously, peak revs were about 12,000 -- then Renault invented pneumatically driven valves, enabling engine speed to jump to 18,000rpm.
At Monza last year, the BMW engine in driver Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams car peaked at more than 19,000rpm. At those engine revs, the accelerative force on the pistons is nearly 9000 times gravity.
Achieving phenomenal power comes at a cost. Automotive engineering genius Ferdinand Porsche once said that "the perfect race car crosses the finish line in first place and then falls to pieces".
New technical regulations this year, stipulating teams can use only one engine per car per race weekend, have team engineers talking of doubling an engine's life expectancy -- to just 800km (almost 497 miles).
Teams are constantly judging how far the car can go on 1kg (2.2 lbs) of fuel, as that dictates the amount carried on board, hence pit-stop strategies. Race fuel "economy" is about 80 litres/100km. (21 gallons of fuel per 62 miles driven, or a bit less than 3 miles per gallon!) Places can be made or lost in a pit stop, when some 60 litres of fuel (almost 16 gallons) can be pumped into the tank in five seconds.
Teams could once use components of rocket fuel (in the height of the turbo era), but the fuel used now is more like premium unleaded, with octane levels of 95 to 102 but without cleansing elements or additives to aid driveability.
Fuel regulations are tough and, over a racing weekend, motor sport's governing body, the FIA, can take random samples to ensure the specified fuel is being used. It analyses the samples with a gas-chromatograph to identify different-sized hydrocarbon molecules -- the fuel must match molecule to molecule exactly -- in a process similar to fingerprint testing.
Each F1 racer has about 1.5km (almost 1 mile) of wire, carrying data from some 120 sensors transmitting such information as the angle of the rear wing and brake, oil and tyre pressures.
In the pit garages are some 500 metres of cabling for data processing. But only the people perched on the "bar stools" in the pits (race engineers, team principal, technical director and operations man) will be engaged in measuring a car's every function in a race.
A team has 70 to 100 people at each GP. To keep costs down, teams may send fewer staff on the "long haul" from Europe to Melbourne's race.
In each team, about a quarter of the staff work on the engine; most of the rest work on the chassis and assembly. Design of the chassis is an ongoing process - as soon as one season starts, the chassis team is already looking ahead to the next.
Each car comprises about 9000 different components, half of which are in the engine. The body and chassis are made from carbon fibre, which is four times stiffer and five times stronger than steel. The software to integrate the data from the sensors and engine and gearbox management programs comprises some 500,000 lines of code, which takes some 20 man-years to write.
The gearbox can have up to seven speeds. If the timing of the gear changes is off by even a few thousandths of a second, the gearbox will self-destruct.
Using digital replicas of various tracks, teams can test the engine before each race. The milling machines used to make car components can shape the surface of an area of one square metre to an accuracy of 4 microns (0.004mm), which is about 25 times thinner than a human hair.
It takes a lot of money and brainpower to generate this sort of vehicle. The outrageous costs have drawn industry criticism, with F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone arguing that the major players must cut costs or risk extinction.
The top teams -- Williams, McLaren, and constructors' champion for the past five years, Ferrari -- each budget on $400 to $500 million a racing season and employ at least 350 people.
A steering wheel alone costs $120,000 and is made of carbon fibre. Most teams' aerodynamic departments own full-sized (if not, then half-scale) rolling-road wind tunnels and have vast computing power. Ferrari has its own test circuit at Maranello in Italy.
For all that, braking remains a great test of the driver's skill. McLaren came up with a new braking system (progressive electro-hydraulic power brakes) which shortened the braking distance - but it was banned. McLaren also invented a unique rear differential to better handle that awesome power; it too was banned. One engineer estimated that half of his 15-year career had been spent on developing gear that was now illegal.
Under 2004 regulations, fully automatic transmission systems have been abolished, as has launch-control, meaning drivers need to control the clutch themselves for take-off.
The job of the scientist is to discover phenomena that are already there, but currently are unknown to humans. The job of the engineer is creative; to design and build something that has never been built before. You could say that engineering comes closest to art in the design of today's F1 car.
just wish they get over it someday....
