All:
The following article is gleaned from a New Zealand paper. The
writer seems to be on a bit of a Peugeot junket -- a couple of weeks
he road tested the new 607 in Africa.
Hugo Steincamp
Virtual vitesse
At Velizy, just off Paris's peripherique, Peugeot builds its Formula
One engines. They are tested so hard in sound-proofed rooms that they
glow pink with heat, writes DAVE MOORE.
There is one task that the engineers at Peugeot's motorsport centre
really enjoy.
Engine test bed numero trois is the dynamic engine testing booth and
its PlayStation-like controls give a clue as to why it is so popular.
The dynamic test-bed accommodates a fixed Formula One engine-gearbox
drive unit driving an electric brake, all equipped with a heat
exchanger cooling system and ducting, to allow the engine to induct
and exhaust.
A console with a running guide screen on the less noisy side of a
perspex viewing window enables an operator to run the engine in
accordance with any Grand Prix race circuit profile stored on a PC.
The operator's dashboard has controls identical to those in the Prost
AP03 Grand Prix car.
On the test bed, which is used mainly for endurance work, the engine
is run as if it was in the car, coupled to the gearbox and on the
track. The lilt and timbre of the distinctive flat V10 sound is so
familiar to the team at Peugeot that each "track" is easily
recognised by its distinct periods of time on and off the throttle
and its unique gear shifts.
Some of the old hands at Velizy can even tell which engineer is
"driving".
In terms of engine speed increase and decrease and gear changes, it
is identical to track testing - except for the chassis and
aerodynamic factors.
Peugeot's head F1 engine engineer is Jean-Pierre Boudy, who is only
too aware of the shortcomings of even an array of five engine and
four component test beds.
"The test bed does not give us an idea of how the car's environment
affects it," he says.
"The temperatures under the bonnet, the vibrations produced by the
engine, which are different as it is not connected to the same mass
(as in a moving race car).
"There are also the longitudinal and transversal accelerations which
affect the oil circuit operation," he says.
Boudy explains that the test beds are necessary because of the sheer
number of engines involved in a typical Formula One team's season.
There simply are not the cars or drivers, not to mention the track
time available, to do without static and dynamic testing.
The Prost Peugeot team uses 50 new engines a season, each of which is
serviced two or three times, resulting in up to 200 engine rebuilds
when component failures and modifications are taken into account.
It takes a team of two mechanics five days to assemble each F1
engine, which is composed of more than 3000 separate parts, some of
which will be tested to destruction after having reached 17,500rpm
and beyond.
In the high engine-speed booths, at Peugeot's Velizy, Paris,
motorsport centre, the sheer mechanical stress is best shown not by
the constant shriek of the 10-cylinder engines revving in the high-
teens for seemingly implausibly long periods, impressive though that
is.
It is more poignant when the lights are turned off and the exhaust
system and parts of the engines' heads glow a rich almost transparent
pink with the friction and combustion-produced heat when up to 800
horsepower is extracted from a normally aspirated Grand Prix engine.
When asked about the potential of the latest Peugeot A20 engine in
the Prost AP03, Jean-Pierre Boudy is ever pragmatic.
"Hard to say," he starts, "We have designed a good engine, certainly
not the best, as Ferrari and Mercedes should be ahead on pure power.
"But," Boudy continues, "we are going to fight to catch them up
during the season.
"We are going to roll up our sleeves and make sure that our package
is rewarded for its intrinsic qualities as soon as possible."
In the meantime, if they want any help, I'm volunteering for test bed
number three - the one with the PlayStation controls!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat 29 Apr 2000 - 02:36:09 UTC