Mechanic escapes KERS scare

was a separate component to the engine.. I thought it was attached PTO style to the engine or attached to the axles and was a separate item completely, not part of the engine itself. The drawings of KERS that I have seen don't show it related to the engine itself...


http://www.brakingtechnologies.com/KersTech/F1KERS.asp

I agree on the smaller flywheel at higher rpm...

Next question I have is what effect on handling does a fly wheel spinning counter to the engine at 19k rpm have on the car? It's like a spinning top, gyro...

 

Even in that position, it doesn't make a big difference. My point was: If the whole engine parts can withstand such high rpms, one additional part also can.

btw, I see problems mounting it that far away from the center of gravity, but I guess they put more thought in it than I did in the last, err, 20 seconds But it seems to me that the company you linked doesn't have much to do with actual F1, or they'd be advertising the teams they're working with. The drawings from Ferrari I saw somewhere here looked different, they have a small generator/motor between the gearbox and the crankshaft.

Actually, yes. That's what I meant above. As I said, the company doesn't seem to have that close connections to F1.

 

Problem is the Ferrari system doesn't work yet, neither does Toyota's... BMW, Honda and McLaren are the only ones who have working systems according to rumor.

The extra weight and the cost don't justify the little if any gains IMHO.


Apparently the amount of energy stored in the fly wheel is equal to burning 1.5ml's of petro.

http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/f1/182014/f1-kers-flybrid.html

 

Yet. It will eventually work.

We can't expect the technology to work to full extent right from the start. KERS will imho be the most revolutionary change in F1 since the introduction of wings - look at the long way aerodynamics have come over the decades. Judging from the often very strange designs, at the beginning, no one really fully understood how all that worked. Today, aerodynamics are nearly equally important as the engine.

 

Florian, how would you think it would be employed, as in say like a booster switch for overtaking etc for short a period till it powers back up.?

 

being as important as horsepower but I think F1 is going backward and not forward in technology. Getting rid of T/C was a stupid mistake, and then with taking away Aero next year we will be back to the same cars that Jackie Stewart was racing in the 1970's.. Next thing they will ban V8's and make everyone run a Briggs and Stratton with 14 PSI on the Turbo... Gilles V will show up again to race.... Ferrari will re-invent the Boxer V12...

KERS is another example of that, it really has no application on the street for the average car, it's old technology, been used on Buses in Euro for over 50 years.. We have better materials now and more knowledge but this technology is as old as the Diesel engine itself.
BTW the hybrid cars here in the US have less MPG than the small compact cars, this whole area of green cars is a joke... BTW, if you have noticed the price of oil is coming down quickly, especially after the governments around the world announced they would punish those who are gouging and profiteering... This whole green thing is contrived.

If they wanted to improve technology they would go back to T/C, increase aerodynamics, get rid of gasoline powered engines and make the manufacturers use bio-diesel and clean diesel techology, and continue down a forward track. Another area to work on would be hydrogen powered cars, or better and newer light weight composites to build cars from.. Carbon Fiber is awesome, but there is always something better.

I personally think Max has Syphilis and it's rotting his brain.

 

My Message:

"1. Since the car is made up of large amounts of resin encased carbon fiber is it not a good electrical conductor?
2. The spinning fly wheel on the KERS system sitting next the magnetic field surrounding the engine and spinning at 19k rpm, will it not itself generate electricity or static electricity?
3. Since the engine and the KERS in a formula one car are a structural member of the car, that is the engine is a load bearing member of the car, would not that allow for the electrical current stored in the KERS to be directly transfered to the carbon fiber body of the car?
4. A guy from NASA last night on TV said that a car is a capacitor traveling on insulators, is this not true?


BTW, today Toyota announced that they will not have KERS ready for 2009..."
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The response:

"1 and 4 - yes. Carbon fibre is a good conductor of electricity, however the resin is not. If the resin doesn't completely cover all the fibres this allows conduction. Now you have a conducting body separated from ground by rubber types, i.e. a capacitor. All you need is a good BMW engineer to ground your chassis/bodywork...I always get sparks of my wife's car but she doesn't drive quite as quick to cause the accumulation of static on the car body.

2, well no, not really. Assuming the flywheel is not made of a ferrous material it will not generate any charge. Although you might like to look at the Farady disc... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homopolar_generator
To create static would require friction and the flywheel would be spinning in a vacuum to reduce friction losses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect"

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Interesting eh?

 

You are stubborn as a mule, and despite various people pointing out that you are wrong, you remain in denial. You are outgunned - in a big way. Not because of numbers, but you have posted multiple things that are flat out factually wrong, yet when told they are wrong you either change topics or just continue to insist you are right. I know that you know you're wrong too - but you don't want to admit it... fair enough, I have done a good job of backing up what I say, and countering your arguments with facts. I doubt anyone reading is factually on your side.

You said..

"How nice it will be for the pit crew to get 1000 volts of electricity put to them while holding on to the fuel hose"

"What's going to keep the car from shooting a charge to the fuel hose? The fueler may not get zapped but if he get's blown up it won't matter much will it?"

"basically where-ever the coil/capacitor can release it's energy in the least path of resistance is where it's going to go"

"The problem is that the whole care can become charged and since it sits on rubber wheels, it won't discharge until it get's grounded"

You said that a car becomes charged from KERS and will short to whatever is closest. That's what I wrote - you are making it sound like cars with KERS run around with huge charges just waiting to spark someone and kill them - a ridiculous assertion.

On your other comments...

"This is why people use to wire a 12 volt battery to their car frame for fun and watch people jump like a rabbit when they would grab the door handle."

(wrong. When I corrected you on this you just dropped it)

"Since there is a lot of conductive material in an F1 car it can store electrical energy just like a capacitor"

(wrong. A car does not "store electrical energy" because it has "a lot of conductive material". It does not store energy at all except in a device designed to store energy, and that energy is contained. No different than gasoline which contains a lot of energy but is contained)

"A car can be a capacitor:"

(wrong)

"The problem is that a spinning fly wheel within a magnetic field is a generator which produces electricity which is stored in the car's frame and body"

(wrong - I haven't gotten to your other posts yet but I'm guessing after my correction you just dropped this wrong assertion)

"BTW, Carbon Fiber is an excellent conductor!!!"

(wrong - I proved it by provided the conductivity of CF as well as carbon filaments as well as copper)

"Carbon is what is used for alternator brushes or and other electrical conductors:"

(wrong - I corrected you on how armature brushes are made)

"Also, the aluminum engine block as it oxidizes produces electrical current... it too can load energy into the car."

(wrong - I corrected this - the voltage and current produced by galvanic mechanisms is negligible)

Piero is a businessman. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering that he got at 62yrs old. I deal with electronics every day - all of it automotive electronics. I designed many of the electronics parts that the Kawasaki factory race teams use, and I also design electronics for police/emergency vehicle use and a lot more. So I probably understand the concepts above better than Piero does. But it really doesn't matter - because Piero was not speaking as an engineer but rather as a businessman and a Ferrari man, so quoting him doesn't help your case or prove anything. Drastic changes in propulsion for F1 cars is never good, especially for the teams at the top who are winning with the current forumula. As for you, there is no "probably" about if I understand these things better than you - I do. I know that because you are simply wrong on a lot of the things you claim.

I never said I was an authority on KERS. I just know a hell of a lot more about the underlying electrical issues than you do.

On my side, I work with automotive electronics every day. On your side, you think a flywheel spinning in a magnetic field generates a charge that "gets stored in the whole car" because "its made of conductive material". You also think hooking up a 12V car battery to a door handle will give you a shock. There is no doubt about whether you are really right and all of us don't get it.

 

AWESOME!

I bet that is a TON of fun. Do you get to drive it or just work on it?

That looks like a GSX-R1000 tailpipe if I am not mistaken? 1000cc I-4 motorcycle engine in there?

 

OW! My liver!!!!!

 

Your quote: ""A car can be a capacitor:"

(wrong)


Quote from an F1 Engineer:

"1 and 4 - yes. Carbon fibre is a good conductor of electricity, however the resin is not. If the resin doesn't completely cover all the fibres this allows conduction. Now you have a conducting body separated from ground by rubber types, i.e. a capacitor. All you need is a good BMW engineer to ground your chassis/bodywork...I always get sparks of my wife's car but she doesn't drive quite as quick to cause the accumulation of static on the car body.


I am sure he is a fool as well...

I may be stubborn, but I ask questions and I read.. You didn't even read, you just attacked. Notice he used the word capacitor....

Also notice that Toyota says KERS is still to dangerous and will not be using it for 2009 in all likelyhood.

 

Nope.

Depends on the size of the flywheel and it's mass.

The reason KERS flywheels spin so fast is because they want to keep them of small diameter... so they spin up quick. It's not about the mass so much as the diameter.

And a higher rotational speed flywheel does not necessarily have a higher chance of explosion... it depends on the materials they are made from as well as how the mass is distributed. It's not really much of a problem, because there are equations that tell you how well a material will hold up, and you can test the metal to see if it's structurally suitable for use in a high-RPM application. F1 people do this all the time - most engine block castings get X-Rayed/magnafluxed and whatever else they use to check for any imperfection before they go into the engine. Flywheels and clutches and crankshafts spin at many thousands of RPM's now - and you don't see them flying out of the engine and through the spectators on a regular basis - so why would a KERS device by any more susceptible to explosive failure?

There will be teething problems for sure, but it's an exciting and promising technology that is definitely a good thing for F1.

 

It's not refined yet and provides no benefit when it is.

 

We're not talking about individual carbon fibers - we are talking about carbon fiber the material as used in F1. An F1 car isn't just woven fibers - it's made of carbon fiber composite which includes lots of carbon fibers bonded together with resin.

Even if the resin covers all of the carbon fibers, you still generally get conduction because if you look at the microstructure of the carbon panel, the fibers intermingle and touch. Talking about where the resin is and isn't is irrelevant - carbon fiber *as a material* has a resistance of around 10 to 100 ohms per cm^3. That is several orders of magnitude a worse conductor than copper - which is "a good conductor". Carbon fiber is a good conductor compared to wood or rubber, but it's a bad conductor compared to metals. Carbon fiber conducts, but not well.

Also, a capacitor is not simply any conductive thing seperated from ground by an insulator... a capacitor is such a thing, but that does not mean anything conductive insulated from ground is a capacitor. That's like saying a rock is round and heavy, so anything round and heavy is a rock.

A car does not have the capability to spontaneously electrify due to the KERS system anymore than your good conductor (an actual good conductor, not carbon fiber) car has the capability to spontaneously electrify due to the 35kV ignition coil. If you touch your car and get a shock - something went wrong. If a spark plug wire frayed and is touching the hood, then it could happen, but it doesn't happen because your car is some kind of giant storage capacitor holding the energy waiting for you to get zapped. It happens because the existing charge that was there got shorted through you and that happened because of a defect.

Lots of defects can happen with a car. Sometimes they catch fire and blow up. Sometimes the block cracks and pistons come out. Sometimes they rust. Sometimes a wheel falls off. None of these are inherent dangers of a car - they are just possibilities. The same with KERS in F1. It is not an inherently dangerous setup like you would have us believe. The BMW engineer did not get zapped by some quack thory about the rotating KERS device generating a charge because it was in a magnetic field and the car acted as a capacitor and zapped the mechanic. That's just silly - what happened is something went wrong.

Maybe a wire frayed. Maybe a ground wire came loose and the mounting bolts acted as the ground. Maybe a bit of electronics failed and shorted the KERS energy to the body? Who knows. But it was not a phenomenon that is inherent to KERS, or to carbon fiber bodies or of cars being "capacitors" that store energy - all of that is nonsense. It was just a defective part - just like when an F1 motor blows up, it's a defective part.

As for attacking, the reason I went on the offense is because you called me out in your post. You posted a bunch of junk science and taunted me with "who you gonna believe? My expert or some guy who likes SRT's and posts on the internet". Why would you expect to call someone out like that and not expect them to reply? If you're gonna do that, you ought to make sure you're right with your facts first. I have no problem being friendly and cool with you, but I didn't exactly get that from you first, did I? I got a call out insinuating I was an idiot/BSer and I responded the best I could with what I know.

 

Awesome!


Thanks!

 

The same was said about Turbos for years and along came Renault, struggled the first year and began to blow people into the weeds the second year. Finally everyone had to go turbo until the FIA determined that the Turbo era was over.

 

KERS is a fancy way of saying regenerative brake/ ing. The first (production) car that had it was in 1996, the EV-1. But it has been used in other transportation applications, with efficiency improvement.

 

"1 and 4 - yes. Carbon fibre is a good conductor of electricity, however the resin is not. If the resin doesn't completely cover all the fibres this allows conduction. Now you have a conducting body separated from ground by rubber types, i.e. a capacitor. All you need is a good BMW engineer to ground your chassis/bodywork...I always get sparks of my wife's car but she doesn't drive quite as quick to cause the accumulation of static on the car body.


He said Capacitor.... I will let him know that you said he is wrong and then he can tell his boss, BMW, that they need to replace him. I agree that the fly wheel didn't generate the charge via magnetic forces of the engine but the KERS itself generated the power stored in the battery, and that charge was sent to the driver via the body of the car which is made of Carbon Fiber. The BMW engineer touched the side pod of the car., nothing else and that is from BMW. I still worry about the fuel guy in the event this defect is there when they come into the pits...

 

As I said above, I didn't drive it. I designed the complete electrical system, from wiring harness to the F1 style steering wheel, and built it together with another member of the team (he made the wiring, I took care of electronics). We also had LOADS of telemetry stuff in there, 2D Datarecording was one of our sponsors. As interesting as it was, I wouldn't do it again. Maybe with 10 other guys helping, but not just the two of us. I never worked that much in my life and I don't plan to ever work that much again

Good eye! It actually is a 600ccm GSX engine, don't know if the tailpipe is from a GSX-1000. There wasn't that much of the original engine left when we were finished with it!

 

If he said a car is basically a capacitor and the reason for that is because the body is conductive but insulated from the ground by the tires, then indeed he either doesn't know what he is talking about, or (much more likely) he was using very laymans terms - like describing a petroleum combustion engine as a "controlled bomb" (which it is, but only an utter layman would be given such an explanation), or (even more likely) you misinterpreted/did not understand the answer. A car equipped with a KERS system *is* a giant capacitor (whether the energy is mechanical or electrical), but it has absolutely nothing to do with the body being conductive, as you stated. The KERS system itself is basically the capacitor - it stores energy. It is not the bodywork that stores energy and it is not generated from rotating masses in magnetic fields. The reason the mechanic got a shock was because something failed in the car and allowed the energy stored in the KERS system to get to the mechanic through the body.

I am amazed that you are so afraid of admitting being wrong that you are now emailing people to try to get them to write stuff that you feel agrees with your stance on the issue. Rather than some condescending "Oh I guess the BMW engineer doesn't know what he's doing" junk - I'm not able to have a reasoned argument with the guy with you as the intermediary filtering everything written though a veil of non-understanding.

But I am glad you've conceeded I was right about all the other stuff I corrected in your posts

I'll put this last one to rest too if you want to put me in touch with the supposed BMW engineer you're talking to to argue with people on F-chat.

 

Your comment: "The reason the mechanic got a shock was because something failed in the car and allowed the energy stored in the KERS system to get to the mechanic through the body."

My main/original point was that the shock from this could cause a rather large problem for the fueling guy if he were the first to touch the car... My main point was and is that this is stupid and dangerous.. I concede the rest, you definately know your electrical engineering way better than I do, but you must concede, KERS is currently very dangerous and not such a good thing yet..

BTW, I never said that a car with KERS is a giant capacitor. I did say the car itself is a capacitor, didn't say how much power it could store or anything else, as I don't know, but I did say it's a capacitor.

So my personal question to you is would you like to run the refueling rig on that BMW?


Also, I have it on good word, it won't be on the cars in 2009, at least that's the rumor coming out today.

 

First, talking about fuelling, you have to understand what causes the fuel to ignite. It is not the electricity itself, it's the spark you surely know from touching grounded metalwork after scuffling over the carpet.
What causes such a spark? High voltage. You need about 10kV per cm of air to create such a spark. Then if the voltage is so high, why don't you die from the sparks we all know? It's because the current is VERY low. It's the electrical current that causes your heart etc to dance tango. Voltage * Current * Time = Energy. The electrical energy you build up by scuffling over the carpet is very low, the time the spark exists is very low, the voltage is very high, so the current has to be very low. It hurts a bit, but that's it.
So what happened to the BMW engineer? We know for sure that some higher current has to be involved, judging by his biological reaction. This does not say anything about potential sparks that could ignite the fuel. It could very well be that you get a shock everytime you touch the car, but no sparks at all would occur as the voltage was always in the 3 digits, too low for the air to become conductive.
Yes, of course, higher voltages than the main operating voltage could build up, causing sparks. But this is also the case without KERS, as everyone who touched a metal part of his car and got a shock knows.

And yes, the car is a capacitor. Basically everything is a capacitor. Does it have any effect? No. A professor at my university once said the secret of engineering is to know what can be ignored. The capacitance of the car is a perfect example for that.

 

Quote: "And yes, the car is a capacitor. Basically everything is a capacitor. Does it have any effect? No"

My Response: "I never said it for sure had effect, I said I thought it had effect, you corrected me, which is good, but I have also been told that a car was not a capacitor and yet now you are saying it is. So I was right in saying a car is a capacitor, just not a factor is why this engineer was shocked... Geez... Seems like a lot of what I said was true, but since we are communicating via a blog the suble details are not being hashed out...


My question to you is if the engineer didn't touch anything metal, only the carbon fiber side pod, which by the way has no metal on it other than the bolts under the pod to attach it to the car, did the electrical charge travel through the carbon fiber?

 

If the car is grounded, I would LOVE to run that refueling rig.

If you ever get out to Boston, you should take a trip to the museum of science. They have a giant Van De Graaf generator (basically a huge static electricity generator). It's probably 30-40 feet high and can generate sparks about 10 feet long. The generator sparks between two globes while the operator gives a speech about electricity. Part of the speech is about lightning hitting cars - the point being people think cars are safe because the rubber tires insulates them. The speaker says this is not the case, and the reason they are safe is because they are made of metal, and lightning would sooner go through the metal to ground than through the person inside to ground.

Point being, electricity will always find it's best way to ground. I would have no problem fueling a car that connected with some ground straps when it pulled into the pits. Also, it would make sense that the fuel rig also be grounded - actually I bet it is, the first part that connects to the car is probably grounded.

As for KERS, I like it. I think it has a lot of potential in road going cars, and developing it in F1 will be a good thing, IMO. Actually, I would be much more scared of a flywheel rotating at 100,000 to 150,000rpm storing mechanical kinetic energy than I would be about a giant capacitor storing the electrical energy from a KERS system. I've seen clutches blow up at the race track and come through the floor of the car, and continue up through the dash, and through the windshield... and that's topping out maybe at 8000rpm. I can't imagine 100,000+ rpm.

I think the F1 guys are smart and will figure this out. There will be incidents, but there have been incidents with gas powered cars too - like guys getting burned and such. Like I said, ignition coils can give you a nasty jolt, but we've learned to isolate them so they aren't a major concern. The same ought to be possible with a KERS setup. Certainly work needs to be done, but I just think on balance KERS is a good thing - but I am sure not everyone agrees.

But imagine if one team came up with some super push-to-pass energy dump kind of thing - I think that would be GREAT in F1!

 

Thats what I was asking Florian earlier in thread, that would be great.

Great interesting stuff in this thread Mike..