It is over 10 years since the sporting and technical regulations governing the FIA Formula One World Championship permitted free and unrestricted use of electronics for powertrain and chassis control. The use of electronics in the sport has progressively grown to the point where they are now an integral part of every modern race car. The electronics control the throttle, injection and ignition in such a way as to deliver optimum torque under all operating conditions. Inductive ignition systems are used throughout F1 in preference to the capacitive discharge systems that are historically linked with racing engines. The electronic systems are designed to minimize control latencies and so provide crisp ignition under transient conditions when control of traction is an important consideration. F1 cars exploit six or seven speed sequential gearboxes to provide fast and consistent gearshifts. There are sensors on the gearbox measuring drum position, main and layshaft speed, plus oil temperatures and pressures. High pressure hydraulics activate the clutch and the shift actuator during the shifts. Information from between 50 and 100 sensors monitor the health and performance of the car as it moves around the track. Some of these sensors are used for control. Many others are there to help the race engineer and car designer understand and set up the car. The information from these sensors, along with derived parameters and diagnostic measurements within the electronic control units, is logged on the car. Today the onboard memory has swelled beyond 512 Mbytes, but takes up far less space in the unit. This information is also transmitted via telemetry to the garage. There are several different types of telemetry system used in F1 at the moment, but many operate in the 1.45 to 1.65 GHz (microwave) band. The heart of the system on the race car is the electronic control unit or 'black box'. This unit gathers information from the sensors on the car, determines how best to control the powertrain to yield the fastest lap times, drives the engine and hydraulic actuators, displays critical information to the driver and sends vast amounts of data back to the pits via telemetry. The main control unit in the modern F1 race car is a multi-processor unit which can deal with close to a billion new instructions every second.
The impact of electronics in formula one racing over the last decade
Der Einfluss der Elektronik bei Formel-1-Sportwagen in den letzten 10 Jahren
2005
8 Seiten
Conference paper
English
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