Mechanic escapes KERS scare

BMW mechanic escapes KERS scare

Questions about the safety of Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) in Formula One were raised again on Tuesday when a BMW Sauber mechanic suffered an electric shock after touching a car fitted with the device during testing at Jerez in Spain.
BMW Sauber were conducting further evaluation of their KERS on the first day of this week's test, with Christian Klien at the wheel of a modified car that featured some 2009-aero concepts and an early version of their energy recovery device.

Klien had just completed a three-lap installation run in the morning when he returned to the pits. After stopping in the pitlane, mechanics attended to the car to wheel him backwards into the team's garage - but the first mechanic to touch the car fell to the ground after receiving an electric shock.

He was pulled to his feet by fellow team members and, after being examined in the medical centre, he was found to have suffered no serious injury.

Klien has not yet returned to the track and is unlikely to do so until the team fully understands what went wrong this morning.

A team spokesman told autosport.com: "During the testing of the KERS car at the Jerez test track today, there was an incident involving a mechanic when the car returned to the pits. He touched it and suffered an electric shock.

"He sustained slight injuries to his left hand and grazing on his left arm. After a brief examination at the track's medical centre, he has returned to the test team. We are currently investigating the incident."

The Jerez pitlane incident comes less than a week after Red Bull Racing were forced to evacuate part of their factory in Milton Keynes after a battery system test of their KERS went wrong.

The issue of KERS safety has been discussed between the teams already this year, but with work now accelerating on getting the devices ready for 2009, there is a renewed urgency to the matter.

Toyota team principal John Howett told autosport.com in Hockenheim: "I think all of these issues have been on the table from the beginning. So you have voltage issues, you have the battery issues; you have the cost of registering the batteries to transport them. People who use high-speed rotating flywheels have also got issues there.

"The perception of KERS is very simple, but the execution is incredibly difficult and the road car applications are completely different from a race car. Whereas the motor, the control unit, the battery, and the basic concept is similar, the actual sophistication and needs of a road car are completely different from what we are having to develop in Formula One. So there is a big difference"

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/69391

 

Interesting--sounds like the system wasn't grounded I suppose? How many parts on an F1 car even conduct electricity?

 

Would not like to be the re-fuel man on that car at the next race. That's for sure (hey an F1 expresion) I would be sihting my self

 

So KERS keeps a large charge of electricity in a car full of high octane fuel... 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, or while extracting the fuel hose and a electrical arc leaves the car to go to the fuel hose which is grounded. Put that with some fumes and we have some explosive racing!!!

Max Mosley again shows how stupid he is and Tesla for would be proud of him for creating a good electrical experiment....

 

During GP weekends teams use grounding strips in the pit boxes to prevent static electricity from causing a fire. I assume these weren't used in a test situation, but it does raise the question of their effectiveness with KERS. any thoughts from those of you more tech savvy than me?

 

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? Gasoline itself isn't flammable but when turned to vapor with air and held in a confined area, like a fuel hose it's a bomb. KERS is basically a high speed generator, storing it's generation in a giant capacitor for quick release. Same as a Coil is on an engine, so 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. Guess who ground's it first most times, either the tire changers or the fuel guy.. So again, he won't get zapped, but a spark and boom.. I am still wondering when they will switch over to Methanol, that way we can't see the fuel guy on fire but we can all watch him burn!

The FIA is full of idiots in my opinion, people who lack common sense and have been drinking tainted water which has warped their brains.

 

I would think the grounding strips were there - Under the box where they would re-fuel. However, and I haven't seen any video, I suspect this incident occurred after he'd stopped, probably forward of the box, and they were pushing him back into the garage - ie, no grounding strips involved.

They'll investigate what happened - It is (very) new technology and they're still figuring it out - Hopefully before anyone gets blown up or electrocuted.......

Cheers,
Ian

 

There is so much wrong with this entire post that I don't even know where to begin.

In short, utterly, utterly wrong.

 

+1

I was going to say the same thing - Where do you start?

I don't have the time right now to address the more glaring mistakes - Mike, maybe if you take the first three or four I'll address the rest.......

cheers,
Ian

 

That so?

 

the part about the whole car becoming charged reminded me of the end scene in Repo Man!
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Gasoline in the absence of air cannot burn.. Therefore Gasoline itself is not flammable.

That's why it won't burn under water in the absence of air....

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question407.htm

A car can be a capacitor:

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/capacitor.htm

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... Since there is a lot of conductive material in an F1 car it can store electrical energy just like a capacitor and that's what happened today, the guy got a shock from the stored energy in the car. The car wasn't generating that energy when this happened, it was stopped and it's KERS, Kenetic Energy Recovery, not sitting still doing nothing energy recovery...

BTW, Carbon Fiber is an excellent conductor!!! Carbon is what is used for alternator brushes or and other electrical conductors:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5265/is_200206/ai_n20441247

 

a large metal mass, fly wheel, spining at high rpm within a magnetic field, generated by the engines electrical componentry, more commonly called a generator which is charging the car along with the static electricity generated by the same fly wheel.

 

KERS is the way of the future, like it or not.

Thus using F1 to sort it out and make it safe is EXACTLY what F1 should be there for. This time Max got it 100% right! F1 has to have a purpose, not just so petrol heads can jerk off ...

Pete
ps: Banning refueling will solve this problem and improve the racing ... here's hoping.

 

For starters, aren't the cars mostly made of carbon? Didn't think it conducted electricity.

 

I suppose they better get rid of ignition coils also.

If only you ran the show, we'd be so much better off! Would you PLEASE get on over there and straighten those idiots out!

 

That's kinda part of it, but there's soooo much more

 

You are off base on most of this. The idea that KERS gives the car a "charge" that will be released into the fuel rig or the guy that touches the car is just simply wrong.

Also, you can wire your car's battery to the door handle no problem - I'll grab it with both hands and hang on for an hour, ok? It won't do anything. 12 volts is not enough of a potential difference to even feel. Thats why you can grab both terminals of your car battery and you won't die (go try it if you don't believe me).

Also, carbon is a good conductor. Carbon fiber will conduct, but it's not what I would call a good conductor, and it's a pretty crappy conductor when it's painted and the various pieces are bonded together with epoxy. Saying that carbon is used for brushes in motors therefore carbon fiber is a good conductor is just silly - like saying nitroglycerin is a great explosive therefore if you ingest it you will explode. So carbon conducts, but not great - but you know what *is* a good conductor? Metal! And what are most cars made of? Metal! And what do cars have in them besides 12V batteries? Ignition coils that step that 12V up to around 35,000+ volts. What else is in a car? Gasoline (oh noes!) and a generator called an alternator. F1 cars also have hydraulic systems that are pressurized to a few thousand PSI (oh NOES!) and various other things that sound bad.

How often do you touch your car and get a big shock? Probably never.

KERS is not inherently unsafe. Also, the fact that the *first* thing the car touches when it comes into the pits is the grounding straps will absolutely make all the difference as to whether the machanics/fuelers get a shock or not, even if the KERS system has shorted to the car body. KERS is being tested and developed. The fact that an engineer got shocked from a prototype KERS system speaks nothing to the system being inherently unsafe anymore than a fuel fire speaks to petroleum engines being inherently unsafe.

KERS has great potential (haha pun intended) for road cars, so F1 pioneering this technology is something I actually agree with, despite the alarmist misconceptions being thrown around on this thread.

 

OMG - we agree completely! That's a first!

 

Mike--I know you resisted (pun sorta not intended?) but thanks for giving in and explaining. Not that I want anyone to get hurt, but it's interesting to read about F1 pushing technology and things not always going perfectly. It's almost a refreshing change from the always-perfect world of F1 to see that these advancements don't just pop up over night.

 

there isn't much point to storing electrical energy except to discharge it ... meaning the car under test is a hybrid?

the type of KERS system i've read about before are purely mechanical, where energy is stored in a flywheel and later released to the drivetrain. it was in an issue of racecar engineering a few months ago.

 

+1

I'm not at all sure, but isn't it up to the teams to decide how they're going to store and thence recover the energy? - Spinning flywheels/gyro's is one way to go, big a$$ capacitors another and good 'ol batteries yet another.

Or am I way off base here?

Cheers,
Ian

 

+2 Gilles27

I think your about right there Ian, however I would start worrying , if they started playing with hydrogen..

IIRC, Honda, may have, and IMO they maybe the one to watch in the future with all this green stuff..

 

Carbon Fiber is a great conductor, SRTMike say's it's not but Xerox says it is. Who are you going to believe, A guy who likes an SRT or the top scientists in the world? If SRT Mike knew what he was talking about in regard to Carbon Fiber then why did Thomas Edison use it for filaments in lamps back in 1879? Why is it used for brushes in alternators?

Read this:

http://web.utk.edu/~mse/pages/Textiles/CARBON%20FIBERS.htm

Secondly, KERS is about taking kinetic energy, the energy from motion and storing it in a fly wheel and/or batteries and then using it again at a later point in time. 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, not just the batteries, especially since it's made out of Carbon Fiber... The Engine in a Formula 1 car is part of the car's frame, it's a load bearing member of the car. As to the comment above about it all being mechanical, if you read the FIA comments below, you will see what you have read previously is not all correct.

Read this:

http://www.wvic.com/how-gen-works.htm

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/electricity.html

The idea that the car can generate and store a charge is not mostly wrong, it's exactly right!

http://www.swedishbricks.net/faq/rust.html

Last night on PBS during the show Supernatural Science the head of NASA said that "A Car is a capacitor running around on insulators!"

Do you believe him or SRTMike?

BTW if KERS is so great then why did Piero Ferrari call it stupid, I am sure you know more about cars than he does right?

Also, the aluminum engine block as it oxidizes produces electrical current, not sure if you knew that or not but it does and since it's part of the car frame, a load bearing member, it too can load energy into the car.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_121a.html

I am not the only one who believes this:

http://www.forumula1.net/2008/f1/f1-news/safety-concerns-over-kers/


By Forumula1.net on Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Filed Under: F1 News
At the next meeting of F1’s Technical Working group, issues surrounding KERS will be discussed.

KERS has caused two dramas in the past week alone – last week, Red Bull had to evacuate it’s factory when a KERS piece started to smoke, and BMW had problems with their KERS at testing yesterday.

One of the BMW-Sauber mechanics suffered an electric shock after touching the car which had been fitted with the device for testing. The team had fitted the car out with an early version of the device along with several new aerodynamic pieces. Christian Klien put in three installation laps before heading back to the pits.

The first mechanic to reach and touch the car received an electric shock and was thrown to the ground. He was quickly pulled to his feet by his colleagues and appears to suffered only a few small scrapes from the incident. BMW chose not to run the car until they completed a full investigation over the cause, meaning Klien did not complete any further laps on Tuesday.

Some people are also concerned about the KERS batteries – there are suggestions that a by-product of an exploded KERS battery contains the poison arsenic - so some are questioning how safe the energy recovery systems really are.


Tell me I am insane and stupid but for some reason the Formula 1 teams and their engineers are saying the same thing I just did!

So do you trust their opinion or SRTMikes?

 

F1 cars are NOT made of carbon fiber, but of carbon fiber strings embedded in resin. BIG DIFFERENCE!!! The resin is an isolator.

Where exactly does a fly wheel rotate in a magnetic field with KERS? Two ways to store the kinetic energy you recover:

a) As kinetic energy in a flywheel
b) Transform kinetic energy into electric energy with a generator and store it in batteries

BMW obviously choose method b). Does your car, which is made of far more conducting metal than an F1 car, become a gigantic capacitor loaded to the brim when the alternator is working, ie everytime the engine runs? No? See?

Totally right, but what capacity does it have? A few pF? The energy you can store in there is tiny.

Same thing here. Yes, that's right in principle, but the current is ridiculously low.


(and just for the record, if you're planning to start personal attacks on me like you did on Mike, I designed and built the electrical system for two formula cars, one of them made of carbon fiber. I know what I'm talking about, Mike seems to know what he's talking about, but you....don't. )