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Originally Posted by Richard Casto
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Now thats an interesting article.......I work in the design and development of automotive air-stream boosting devices, and compressor design is something that I have been handling for a good 6 years, I have worked with all the big compressor design consultancies for automotove based projects, I'm certainly no CFD engineer, but I understand the basics of compressor design in order to not design a turkey of a compressor, we will regularly re-design a compressor more than 10 times just to find an extra 2 or 3% efficiency.
Like the article suggests, it appears that what Mclaren have pushed Honda to do is the basis of Hondas problem......placing both the compressor and exhaust turbine inside the engines V will reduce down OD of the volute scroll for both compressor and turbine to a stupidly small diameter and generally kill the efficiency of both - severley.......a good radial flow compressor is in the region of 80% efficient, if for packaging reasons you need to drastically reduce the OD, the compressor efficiency easily falls to circa 50%, which is the engineering equivalent of falling off a cliff, we all know in F1 just 1% can be the difference between the front and back of the grid. I heard the rumor that Honda are using an axial flow compressor, if so it will be good for flow, but hardly any pressure building potential, no wonder they are on the back foot with a massive power deficit.
Also no wonder Mclaren are being so quiet, it looks like the "extreme" approach as bitten them both on the backside, and the joke being they still entered a year later and made a hash of it.
If you look at what Mercedes have done with the compressor and turbines at the very end of the engine, the volute scrolls are visually very big, they will have hardly any design compromises in this critical region hence a highly efficient boosting system and very powerful engine.