[HN Gopher] Honda's F1 engine technologies that enable >50% ther...
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Honda's F1 engine technologies that enable >50% thermal efficiency
Author : ylk1
Score : 51 points
Date : 2025-03-20 04:42 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (global.honda)
(TXT) w3m dump (global.honda)
| ylk1 wrote:
| The only manufacturer to release any details about their
| powertrain technology.
| ylk1 wrote:
| They've detailed their work on engine/MGU-K/MGU-H/ESS here:
| https://global.honda/en/tech/motorsports/Formula-1/
| metalman wrote:
| UMmmmm, actualy there are no details, it's more like bait,
| layed out in front of the rabbit hole. What it does
| outline/hint at is the methodology of there thinking about
| engine development, within the arbitrary rules of F1. And what
| they, and everybody else leaves out, is that limitations in
| material sciences is the reason for the engineering heroics,
| and that access to say, the single crystal materials used for
| jet turbine hot section blades, would allow higher combustion
| temps and pressures, and greater efficiency, in NA engine, that
| would outperform anything built yet. The reason that F1 cant do
| that is money, and compared to true airospace development,F1
| has lint in there pockets, and have falken back onto 1940's
| turbocompound aircraft engine technology.
| ylk1 wrote:
| what are you even talking about? A lot of stuff is clearly
| laid out on how they achieved better efficiency.
|
| You can get more power out of NA with better materials you've
| stated but not efficiency.
|
| F1 wanted more road relevancy and hence ended up with turbo-
| charging and Fuel limits
| metalman wrote:
| zero mechanical details, nothing verifiable is zero
| information, plus there is a long venerable tradition of
| lying like hell whenever you talk about competitive
| advantages :) efficiency goes with materials, as a higher
| temperature and shock loading, will permit higher
| compression ratios, and that is as far as I know the only
| way to exract energy from a piston engine well unless the
| piston part is just viewed as a gas generator, but whoa
| betsy, the rabbit hole is looming before us, and having
| listened to folks involved in engine development (including
| F1), I am just a spectator,engines are hard, and these days
| anyone who could do ICE, is looking at other stuff, or
| retirement ceramics have come close, but dont have the
| reiability when produced at the scale needed for mass
| market
| pcdoodle wrote:
| This sounds like a game changer, can it be adapted to low power
| engines at some point?
| ylk1 wrote:
| Ferrari's partner MAHLE has pre-chamber ignition productized
| for OEMs: https://www.mahle-powertrain.com/en/experience/mahle-
| jet-ign...
|
| I think, Maserati MC20 has this tech.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| What are the NOx emissions?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Given that they weren't optimizing around them, I'm guessing
| not-so-good. But maybe I'm wrong.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Nitrogen oxides, NO2, NO3.
|
| They're generally toxic in large concentrations and I think a
| greenhouse pollutant.
| zelon88 wrote:
| This is misleading. The article doesn't claim a specific thermal
| efficiency anywhere. Not sure why the title of this post says
| >50%.
|
| Also, the engine itself is not achieving >50% thermal efficiency.
| The propulsion system is a hybrid electric / ICE unit that is
| designed inside and out to be able to recover potential energy in
| a variety of ways, and then turn that back into kinetic energy
| that propels the car.
|
| So to say that the "engine" technology enables ">50% thermal
| efficiency" is completely untrue.
|
| Now, to look at the merits of the article. The specific
| technology that they are claiming to have advanced here is "Rapid
| Combusion" and "Lean Boost." Rapid combustion refers to the
| layout of the fuel injectors in relation to the spark plug and
| the fuel injector timing. In early SPFI (Squential port fuel
| injection) vehicles and earlier, air was pre-prepared and fully
| mixed with an adequate amount fuel before it entered the
| combustion chamber. This mixture enters the combustion chamber
| and is ignited by the spark plug. The flame front propagates away
| from the spark plug until the (air within the ) mixture is
| consumed.
|
| What Honda is doing now is injecting only a small amount of fuel
| into the combustion chamber up front. This small amount of fuel
| is ignited by the spark plug, and then the rest of the fuel is
| injected into the cylinder. This enables Honda to use another
| technique called "lean boost" that has been around in diesel
| engine technology for decades.
|
| By initiating combustion with a small amount of fuel, the flame
| front propagates faster and burns hotter. The added intensity of
| the burn means that subsequent fuel injected into the cylinder
| will self-ignite without any further spark from the spark plug.
| These two flame fronts essentially "meet in the middle" of the
| combustion chamber. Tech geeks can think of the performance
| improvement of having two concurrent flame fronts propagating
| simultaneously as an improvement similar to the data transfering
| out of a RAID 0 array vs a single drive.
|
| Because the fuel mixture is injected directly into the combustion
| chamber, (instead of being mixed outside and then pushed in like
| SPFI) pre-detonation is virtually impossible. Pre-detonation is
| avoided in passenger cars by injecting more fuel into the
| combustion chamber than what is required. This additional fuel
| doesn't carry additional power, but it makes the mixture robust
| enough to withstand high temperature and pressure long enough for
| the spark plug to ignite the mixture in a controlled way. In an
| F1 car, wasting fuel for this purpose is not acceptable. This is
| where "lean boost" comes into play.
|
| In a passenger car, the fuel mixture is already in the combustion
| chamber when the piston begins it's compression stroke. So the
| mixture must be robust enough to withstand being compressed by
| the piston. In an F1 car, the fuel is absent until the piston has
| reached the very top of it's compression stroke. So in an F1 car,
| the fuel mixture isn't exposed to high temperature or pressure
| until the very moment it is expected to burn. As a result it is
| possible to inject a lesser amount of fuel than what is ideal.
| The ideal mixture of air:fuel for petrol is 14.7:1. In a
| passenger car this is a little bit lighter, say 13.5:1 to avoid
| pre-detonation. In an F1 car they go the other way say 15.5:1,
| because it saves fuel and there is no risk of pre-detonation due
| to other design factors.
| ylk1 wrote:
| Mercedes crossed 50% thermal efficiency in 2018 with their F1
| engine:
| https://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a15049580/mercedes-...
| Their recent interviews suggest they are up by 2 to 3% on that
|
| Honda did too but they never marketed the explicit number.
| ylk1 wrote:
| The geometric compression limit for F1 is 18:1. They make it
| sound like they can go farther.
| cromulent wrote:
| The power unit in F1 generally refers to the ICE and the MGU-H &
| MGU-K. This article doesn't mention nor specify the actual
| numbers.
|
| Mahle / Ferrari were getting 45% or so out of the ICE a few years
| ago with pre-chamber ignition.
| ylk1 wrote:
| Most of the production engines still use tumble flow combustion
|
| For reference: Nissan e-power with recuperation ~50%:
| https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/INNOVATION/TECHNOLOGY/ARCHI...
|
| Mahle ~45% with pre-chamber:
| https://www.mobilityengineeringtech.com/component/content/ar...
|
| Toyota dynamic force engines ~40% :
| https://www.thedrive.com/tech/18919/toyota-develops-worlds-m...
|
| Toyota's newest engines claim even more:
| https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/40850156.html
|
| Honda hybrid ~40%: https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-
| automobiles/releases/relea...
|
| Startup Carnot engines claim 70% efficiency:
| https://carnotengines.com/technology/
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