FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[dellamy]

Hi guys I wonder if you can help me, I work for a television company and I need to find out how much thrust a formula one car produces, thought this would probably be the best place to find out. Does anybody happen to know? I understand it varies from engine to engine but I just need an idea.
Any help appreciated

[Bruno_Brazil]

Hi guys I wonder if you can help me, I work for a television company and I need to find out how much thrust a formula one car produces, thought this would probably be the best place to find out. Does anybody happen to know? I understand it varies from engine to engine but I just need an idea.
Any help appreciated

Do you mean Horse Power ??

[dellamy]

Well, we want to compare the amount of thrust a jet engine produces to a formula one engine, do you know how to convert horsepower into thrust?

[Bruno_Brazil]

Well, we want to compare the amount of thrust a jet engine produces to a formula one engine, do you know how to convert horsepower into thrust?

I don`t think it`s possible to convert that...

For example you can easily see trucks with 500HP and a BMW Z4 with a half of that horse power and has much more thrust...
It depends on how the Power is worked.

But schumacher has already run against a jet with a ferrari few years ago and won.
Of course it was a small straight, but i think that it means that the thrust is stronger inside a F1 car.

[stonemonkey]

The cars can produce more than enough power to break traction at lower speeds but at higher speeds when the downforce has more effect it won't, find it's top speed (max engine output and total resistance are in equilibrium) then find the rolling resistance and the air resistance at that speed and add them together and the thrust should be equal to that.

[Gaz]

Well From Yahoo Answers:

When Frank Whittle was trying to get the RAF to pay attention his engine was producing about 1,000 pounds of thrust. The thing that got the RAF to pay attention was that that's about what a Rolls Royce Merlin was producing in a Spitfire at the time.

So we can say that under limited circumstances it's about 1:1.

Does this bear any sort of examination? One of the difficulties is that when gas turbine cores are put to other uses they are often run at more or less conservative power levels. A Rolls Royce Olympus engine produced about 19,000 pounds of thrust in aircraft uses and 25,000hp in marine uses.

so i guess its roughly 1-1 so a F1 car has between 800-1000 hp

a RAF Tornado has around 17,000 lbs of thurst so you using the above theory it has 17,000hp (ish)

thats alot of horses.

But if you stuck a propeller on a F1 engine you could mesure the thrust that way but i have no idea what you would get.

The Spitfire's static thrust is approx. 3,000lbs but as airspeed increases that would fall away. The Merlin engine can produce 1,175 hp.

[Gert]

Surely maximum thrust equates to maximun torque rather than maximum BHP?

1000 Nm = 737 lbs/ft according to the 30 secs I've just spent on google.

All you have to do now is find out what torque an F1 car produces in Nm & there's your answer.

Can I have a job on telly now please?

[stonemonkey]

The Spitfire's static thrust is approx. 3,000lbs but as airspeed increases that would fall away. The Merlin engine can produce 1,175 hp.

what do you mean the thrust would fall away? if it's a case of the planes airspeed affecting the engines air intake detrimentally then ok, otherwise do you mean it's acceleration reduces until it can no longer accelerate?

If it's the latter then the thrust remains the same but the air resistance increases exponentially with airspeed to the point where an engine producing 3000lbs thrust will not accelerate a plane that is experiencing 3000lbs of resistive force due to the air.

Like I said with the car, the thrust could be found if you can find what sum of the air and rolling resistance are at it's top speed.
The rolling resistance may be negligable since it increases linearly with speed (or maybe not due to increase in downforce as speed increases but probably still not massively) whereas the air resistance is exponential and would be the main factor in the resistance at high speeds, there's some ways of working it out by using the area of the sillouette of the front view of the car but I don't know how accurate they are.

EDIT: Sorry, on the thrust falling away, if it's a propeller plane and the drive to the propeller isn't geared then the thrust would vary with airspeed with respect to the power distribution curve of the engine.

[Gaz]

The Spitfire's static thrust is approx. 3,000lbs but as airspeed increases that would fall away. The Merlin engine can produce 1,175 hp.

what do you mean the thrust would fall away? if it's a case of the planes airspeed affecting the engines air intake detrimentally then ok, otherwise do you mean it's acceleration reduces until it can no longer accelerate?

If it's the latter then the thrust remains the same but the air resistance increases exponentially with airspeed to the point where an engine producing 3000lbs thrust will not accelerate a plane that is experiencing 3000lbs of resistive force due to the air.

Like I said with the car, the thrust could be found if you can find what sum of the air and rolling resistance are at it's top speed.
The rolling resistance may be negligable since it increases linearly with speed (or maybe not due to increase in downforce as speed increases but probably still not massively) whereas the air resistance is exponential and would be the main factor in the resistance at high speeds, there's some ways of working it out by using the area of the sillouette of the front view of the car but I don't know how accurate they are.

EDIT: Sorry, on the thrust falling away, if it's a propeller plane and the drive to the propeller isn't geared then the thrust would vary with airspeed with respect to the power distribution curve of the engine.

Yeh with a modern aircraft say the Extra-300 its got a 230HP geared engine but produces 1200lbs of thrust.

[Gaz]

Surely maximum thrust equates to maximun torque rather than maximum BHP?

1000 Nm = 737 lbs/ft according to the 30 secs I've just spent on google.

All you have to do now is find out what torque an F1 car produces in Nm & there's your answer.

Can I have a job on telly now please?

ah but torque is rotational force roughtly the force in the engine can apply to turn somthing.

well a jet engine isn't really pushing against anything (apart from air) when it spins and thats just to pull air in and the force it emits is not rotational its vectored out

Where as a car engine is turning the wheels which has reistance against the ground and the weight of the car and wheel etc..

the only proper way to test this, would be to strap a big propeller on a F1 engine - with or without gearbox and then see what thrust it pushes out.

Whats this tv program about anyway?

[bud]

Well, we want to compare the amount of thrust a jet engine produces to a formula one engine, do you know how to convert horsepower into thrust?

Look at this site
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/pr ... 0195.shtml
One of the most frequent questions we receive concerns the difference between thrust and horsepower and how to convert between the two. The problem is that these quantities are not directly related, so it is not simple to convert one to the other. The dictionary defines thrust as a force or pressure exerted on an object, and it is typically measured in units of pounds (lb) or newtons (N). Power, however, is a measurement of work, which is defined as the amount of motion a force creates when it is exerted on a body over a certain amount of time. Power is typically measured in units of horsepower (hp) or kilowatts (kW). The most common equation used to relate these quantities is as follows.

Based on what we have seen, you ought to have a better appreciation for why it is preferable to compare jet engines in terms of thrust rather than power and propeller-driven engines in terms of power rather than thrust. While the opposite can be done, the process of converting between power and thrust requires us to know or assume additional information that is usually difficult or awkward to estimate.

[stonemonkey]

I need to find out how much thrust a formula one car produces

the only proper way to test this, would be to strap a big propeller on a F1 engine - with or without gearbox and then see what thrust it pushes out.

The thrust in an F1 car is achieved through the tyres, A propeller fitted to an F1 engine is not an F1 car.

[Gaz]

I need to find out how much thrust a formula one car produces

the only proper way to test this, would be to strap a big propeller on a F1 engine - with or without gearbox and then see what thrust it pushes out.

The thrust in an F1 car is achieved through the tyres, A propeller fitted to an F1 engine is not an F1 car.

No mate F1 cars don't produce thrust, thrust is a mesurement of force generated compared with the flow rate of the exhaust and the exhaust veolocity.

You can mesure a f1 car in torque, horse power, power to weight and speed

he asked how to convert horse power in to thrust horse power is generated by the f1 cars engine just as thrust is generated by a jet or rockets engine.

so the real question is how much thrust can a f1 cars engine produce which you can obtain by fitting a properller to it and mesuring the thrust produced.

[stonemonkey]

No mate F1 cars don't produce thrust, thrust is a mesurement of force generated compared with the flow rate of the exhaust and the exhaust veolocity.

No mate.

The dictionary defines thrust as a force or pressure exerted on an object, and it is typically measured in units of pounds (lb) or newtons (N).

The thrust of an F1 car is the force the tyres exert against the tarmac to drive the car forward which by the wording of the OP is what was asked for though I admit now that the question has since changed.

[Gaz]

No mate F1 cars don't produce thrust, thrust is a mesurement of force generated compared with the flow rate of the exhaust and the exhaust veolocity.

No mate.

The dictionary defines thrust as a force or pressure exerted on an object, and it is typically measured in units of pounds (lb) or newtons (N).

The thrust of an F1 car is the force the tyres exert against the tarmac to drive the car forward which by the wording of the OP is what was asked for though I admit now that the question has since changed.

thats not thrust, thats Tractive effort - which is kind of like TORQUE

Thrust is not a rotational Force.