Why not a V-10 Boxer in F1?

Does anybody know why Ferrari isn't making a "V"-10 engine with 180 degrees angle basically resulting in a boxer? Is it the regulations that prohibit this?

I'm thinking F1 is all about getting your CG down to the ground and a boxer would do that (as in the T3 from Villeneuve/Scheckter). Or would it become too wide a package and therefore hinder aerodynamic flow around the car?

 

Too wide, far too wide. The drop in CG would not offset the aero difficulties that come with such a package.

 

I'm not sure about this. The engine is relatively small, so spreading it in the back would probably fit within the current dimensions, just a guess. But you would need a different placing of the radiators etc., maybe that's the reason?

I'm just curious because each year they proudly announce how they rebuilt the entire car to lower the engine a few millimeters. So obviously it would have a huge impact to get all that engine weight closer to the ground.

 

Andreas,

I think one of the problems that Renault had with there 110 degree v-10 was chassis stiffness. The car had to have Carbon stiffeners to reduce the flex of the car.

One thing that can come out of the Boxer format engine would be a re agangement of the components. I.E. air intakes down low and the Exhaust mounted high. Also they could change the firering order of the engine allowing for the cross feeding of the Exahust systems to optimise flow.

Curently most of the V-10 race motors are 5 and 2 motors. In this each row of the V is treated like a V-Twin engine and Each bank is treated like its own engine so for example the front row of the V will fire in rapid succession then the last row then row 3 then 2 the 4.

Here is a picture of how some people felt that Renault should have done up there Wide Angle V-10

Rob

 

For starters, a V engine is less than 180 degrees, and a boxer engine is 180 degrees, or horizontally opposed. No such thing as a V10 boxer by definition. A boxer 10-cyl engine would almost certainly be too wide for F1 packaging purposes.

Gary

 

So the rules would allow it?

Interesting. There is still room for innovative engineering I would think. That Renault approach looks interesting. It just sounds to me as if we have reached a limit of what can be done in a car, but that reverse Renault concept shows, that the limits haven't been reached yet.

 

The only problem i can see would be the intake on a boxer configuration, but this can be solved by moving the intake cam over and running the intake ports thru the cam covers.

There could be an aero advantage in this configuration and less heat stress on the rear suspension compenenets. Plus the exahust flow can be centered over a diferent wing profile to create extra down force form the high speed air flow from the engine. One other thing to remember id that heat will rise so if the exhaust is on top of the motor it will have less of an affect on the air intake.

 

It wasn't chassis stiffness, it was engine stiffness and primarily the fact that the wide vee had reliability problems due to the very unbalanced nature of the engine.

 

A note on engine balancing:

Any engine with 90 degree banks and an even number of cylinders can be setup for perfect primary balance but not secondary or teritary balances. Note: a flat plane V8 has perfect primary balance but not perfect secondary or tertiary balnce, while a 90 degree crank will have perfect primary balance and perfect secondary balance but not perfect tertiary balance.

Any engine with 720*N degrees divided by number_of_cyclinders can be setup for perfect primary balance (for N=1 or 2), when the number of cylinders is even it can have perfect secondary balance, when the number of cylinders is divisible by 3 it can have perfect tertiary balance.

Notice (again) that the Ferrari V8s only have perfect primary balance, and if this is all you are looking at for smoothness:

A V10 can be made in 90 degree, 72 degree, 144 and 180degree configurations and have perfect primary balance. While a 144 degree (as seen above) is too hard to package the headers (or conversely the intakes) for RACING, it is a viable organization for road cars--just dont place it above the transmission.

However, the drawback of the V10 architecture is that both ends of the crankshaft are oscilating about different points (unlike the flat plane V8s). This causes the amount of weight required to balance the crank to go up dramatically, increasing rotational inertia and decreasing its ability to rev freely. Only the 180 degree configuration and only in the horizontally opposed arrangement (10 throws on the crank) avoids this unfortunate balance situation.

 

So Mitch are you saying, that a 180 degree engine would actually work given your three ranges of balance?

BTW: What the heck is primary, secondary and tertiary balance?

 

Yes, any engine with an even number of cylinders can have perfect primary balance with a 180 degree arrangement and dual throw crankshaft (ala BMW motorcycle flat twin, or Porsche flat 6 engines.)

If the connecting rods were infinately long, there would not be secondary or tertiary balance issues. If the pistons were connected to the crank by means of a 'scotch yoke' connecting rod, there would not be secondary and tertiary balance issues.

So, in effect, Primary balance requires the center of gravity of the engine does not move around (foreward/backward, left/right, up/down) as the crank rotates and the pistons reciprocate.

Secondary and tertiary balance relates to the acceleration of the pistons due to the finite length connecting rod. The pistons accelerates from a dead stop at TDC to maximum velocity in about 70 degrees of crankshaft rotation, then decelerates to dead stop in 110 more degrees. Since 70 does not equal 110 there is a force balancing issue. When you plot the acceleration of the piston and compare it to a sine wave, the difference can be expressed in harmonics (Fourier series). The low order terms are secondary and tertiary balance terms/forces. OK, so we can sort of see secondary vibration (70 versus 110). The way to visualize tertiary is to notice that 70 (and 110) are close to 60 degrees (and 120) which is a natural vibrational mode of a rotating system. With the right length connecting rod (shorter than anyone uses) one can build an engine with perfect secondary balance and horible tertiary balance.

So why is any of this important? Bearing loads!

The clearance between a mainshaft bearing and the crankshaft is on the order of 0.0015" and there are 5 of these bearings spaced evenly accross the crankshaft (V8). If the crankshaft starts vibrating larger than 0.0015" end to end, then one or more bearings will have massive loads that the oil film has to prevent from touching the surface of the bearing mateiral--or--bad things happen in the bottom of the engine.

 

Doing this would compromise the flat combustion chambers they strive for nowadays ...

The engine is used as a stressed member and thus is part of the chassis, thus if not stiff enough the car has a chassis stiffness problem.


Also Tifosi, look at how much work they put in to making the rear of the cars nowadays really compact for aero reasons ... a boxer engine would mean that they have to go in another risky direction ... and wouldn't that be fun , but Renault have returned to a narrower angle v10 ...

Pete

 

Pete,

In all reality this would allow for a straighter shot for the airflow thru the port and create an even flatter combustion chamber shape.


Rob

 

I don't think so as to get the room for the inlet port you will have to widen camshafts apart and thus widen the valve angle V.

Modern cylinder heads aim for very narrow valve angles (like 18 degrees or something) and really there is only just enough room for the spark plug. Remember also that F1 engines do not want longer valves than necessary thus the cams are fairly close to each other ... thus maybe we have a communication barrier

Yes the airflow would be almost straight down but I am not sure whether this is that important or not as the air is really sucked in, and on a boxer engine the inlet port would actually be horizontal ...

Pete
EDIT: Okay I tried to sketch (with paint) what I am talking about . Hopefully this will show how the valve can have a narrower angle and thus how the combustion chamber can be flatter ... :

 

Pete,

all you have to do is offset the Intake Cam then have a follower to open and close the valve. Ferrari is already doing this with there F1 V-10s to create a more narrow head by off setting the cam towards the center of the heads.

I will try to draw it up for you but it will be more than likely posted tommorow.

Rob

 

No need to draw, I understand what you are saying ... but lets take it too the mathematical extreme. You will never be able to get as narrower valve angle with the inlet ports between the cams as you would be able to with 'normal' porting. Thus you could be restricting combustion chamber shape ... which IMO is where the design should start and everything else should abide by.

Also with 4 valves per cylinder, how do you intend to have the ports go around the spark plugs or do you intend to have 2 injectors and velocity stacks etc. per cylinder.

I have done drawings of this concept because I thought it had merit ... it is also interesting to notice that no modern engine does this anymore (very common in the '60s) ... just not enough space IMO.

Anyway yes you can design around most problems, but I disagree that the inlet port between the cams lends itself to a flatter combustion chamber ... it doesn't theroetically (remember you can offset the camshaft and use rockers with an normal outside inlet port too, thus you could just about have the valves pointing directly upwards and parallel)

Pete

 

It wont be long until no camshafts are needed, with electro/pneumatic opening and closing.

That will open up all sorts of avenues.

 

Yes that will be a huge change and bring out many innovations. I believe Lotus have a prototype engine running ... looks funny but it will be the ultimate engine in regard to valve timing, etc.

Pete

 

While there are several pluses to the electro valve actuation system there are also several minuses.

The pluses:

Infinate number of cam shaft profiles
Disabling of cylinders while the care is on the grid for a start or behind the safety car, Pit lane speed limiter........

Minuses:

Extra weight up high in the engine
Increased engine size in the cam cover area
More Electronics to have to be programed and more to go wrong.

 

I took the libety of adding a cylinder and the airflow path to PSK's drawing.

Notice that the normal way of connecting the inlet port to the combustion chamber flows air towards the center of the chamber while the other way flows air along the sides of the cylinder. My intuitioin says that the normal way has less resistance.

 

Another advantage is that we would no longer need a throttle (butterfly, sliding, rotating barrel, etc.). Controlling of engine speed can be implemented by the amount the inlet valves open. This means no throttle restrictions at all, and also the inlet valves only opening the required amount instead of fully opening every cycle.

BMW are already testing a prototype engine that utilises this concept but still retains camshafts.

Electo valve operation will make huge gains for road engines, economy, and performance over the full rev range ... will it add much to race engines???, what do you think?

Pete

 

Pete,

BMW's 7 series motors already use this feature it is not by electronic solinoids but a cam and a movable follower that changes valve lift and durration therefore the engine does not need any throttle plates to control air intake.

Rob

 

I think that besides the enormous width of the block, it would create new problems to the engineers, to evacuate the heat generated by the exhaust pipes, which should also place in another position and with it, they would force to carry out a completely new design of the vehicle.

The V 10 current they are not the panacea, but if they have arrived to a development level and incredible benefits that almost touch the perfection and with a size of the frankly ridiculous block. To think that they rotate almost all around the 19500 rpm, with some powers of more 900CV and with alone 3000cc and atmospheric!! and their configurations are all very similar ones, oscillating from 75º to the 90º most. When Renault has abandoned the V 10 of 110º, be maybe because he has not been able to squeeze this configuration to the maximum and the chassis of the car, it didn't allow more evolution.