Thought this was an interesting video explaining what MB has done different this year and part of the reason why they have been doing so well! Split turbo, pretty ingenious.
Very cool, thanks for sharing. This is what happens when very intelligent engineers put their minds to building race cars instead of uber safe and environmentally friendly econoboxes!
Yeah F1 is fascinating even just from an engineering standpoint and it's cool to see F1 technology creep into consumer cars (even if it usually only starts in supercars like the ERS type systems in the P1 and 918). For the split turbo it must be extremely expensive to make. A long shaft like that between the turbine and compressor has to be made of titanium or something really light or it would add even more lag and keeping it balanced up to hundreds of thousands of rpms is crazy.
Funny that a sketch of that layout was posted in January 2013 http://somersf1.blogspot.com/2013/01/2014s-power-units-16-v6-turbos-with-ers.html
Oh yeah it's not really breaking news but the video did a good job explaining all of the other effects that design had on the whole car compared to the competition.
doesn't mercedes also have a suspension setup that produces downforce in the rear due to the shape of the rear arms?
I have a great deal of respect for the engineers which can look at a problem and see a solution that is outside of the box like this. The thing that I am most intrigued by this year is the fact that the shaft connecting the turbine and compressor of the turbo is also attached to a motor/generator. This system acts as a generator when there is excess exhaust generated turbine capacity by dumping power into batteries or some other high density energy storage device. The system also acts as a motor to spool up the compressor when the exhaust gas flow rate is not at optimal capacity. Imagine an engine with no turbo lag. I was surprised to find out that a local company, MTS Systems, in Eden Prairie has been building the Kinetic Energy Recovery (KERS) motors for Ferrari F1 for several years. They have a blurb on their website about the turbo energy recovery system as well. https://www.mts.com/en/forceandmotion/groundvehicletesting/MTS_006705?article=3 I wonder how long it will take for this technology to trickle down to my STI in some reliable format… I seem to recall rumors of an “electric turbo” for the WRX floating around the internet. I wonder if it might present itself as something like the F1 solutions. http://www.autoblog.com/2012/05/03/next-subaru-wrx-to-use-electric-turbocharger/
Yeah that system is called the MGU-H (Motor generator unit - heat) as opposed to the MGU-K (the kinetic one from the brakes aka KERS). The kinetic portion is limited in the amount of energy they can harvest but the heat portion is not which is pretty cool. The turbos they use are HUGE for a 1.6L engine and without the MGU-H they would be laggy as hell! They also don't use a traditional wastegate IIRC, instead to limit boost they use the turbo basically as a generator like you said. Everyone bitches about the new V6 turbo engines but I think they are pretty badass. Also, I didn't know that MTS made the KERS systems! That is super cool, because they are a customer of mine. They have so many divisions and they are pretty secretive its hard to know all the projects they do.
Hey @Nhibbs , do you know if anyone has posted cutaway engineering diagrams of this setup? The engineering challenges in making that shaft work are severe, the bending mode issues must be insane. One thing I noticed from what I saw online is that since the MGU-H is between the two turbo sections, it looks more like it's two unequal-length shafts coming out of it instead of one long one from front to back. That makes a lot of sense, to push the modes up.
Watch this video. It has a 3d animation of the setup. Go to 5:26 for when they describe how they separated the turbine from the compressor. It looks like it is one long shaft through the V in the engine. It is probably made from very fancy alloy and is a lot like a jet engine. The turbine shaft on a big jet engine is a lot longer than that.
