INSIDE AMG – F1 Special (4/4) | Visiting the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team
Hi! Welcome back to our Inside AMG F1 special from Brixworth. If you have seen part 1, you know that we dive deep into the technical specialties at AMG High Performance Powertrains. Part 2 gets even more exciting, there is a lot to look forward to. Let us jump right into the video. It is so clean here, it is like a lab. We’ve got an F1 engine in there, we would like you to fit a water pump on it.
Nice! I introduce you to Jaden, who will guide you during the pump assembly. -Jaden, nice to meet you! -Nice to meet you too. You are going to make sure that I don’t make a fool of myself.
-Yes. -Awesome! We will fit a water pump to the power unit. We will get you some gloves.
All right. Thank you. Let you take that. Thank you. All right, so I just … OK. These are the connectors, they go in here, right?
Yes. You want to line those up and try not to snag an o-ring. OK. Put it in facing towards the power unit. And once it is in, bend it towards yourself.
It should just go in with a wiggle and a push. You can add some pressure just like that. Further? No, it looks like it is seated in properly. Everything looks lined up. -Yes. -Awesome! So we do now have fixings.
There are only three mounting points. The three mounting points are there, there, and back here. It is also important not to cross thread a bolt. So crazy how little space you have! Everything is so cramped in here.
And all these different components, all the little angles and stuff. That is crazy! Yes, access can be limited at times. There we go. Also this last one back here. You have to get it at the right angle to almost bite into the thread.
Here we go. You want to try to get the tool as straight as possible. OK. It should be going in now. Oh yes. Now it works.
Yes. How long does it take you to mount one of these? Probably just two minutes. It doesn’t take too long.
We will be torquing them up to 7 Nm. OK. That would just snap onto there like that.
And it will beep at you when you reach your desired torque. All right, I will hand it over to you. You want to go in the same order as the way you fitted it. Got it.
Perfect! Now, we will be fitting an elbow from the water pump to the scavenge pump. OK. -Just take those. -Thank you.
First you want to get this on as square as possible. Because you don’t want to pinch an o-ring. All right. I have to be very gentle with it. Yes. -That looks about right. -Yes, perfect. Again. 1, 2 and 3 and we will check it all again after.
So awesome! I can’t believe I am actually working on an F1 engine. It can be quite surreal at times. And it is a bit surreal when you see the product in use. That must be one hell of a feeling. Watching TV and saying “Yes I was a part of that”. Yes, it is. It is quite special to work here.
This is number 1. Number 2. And number 3. We are all set. You have successfully fitted a water pump to the power unit. Awesome! That is so cool. Thank you very much! -No worries. -Cool!
Well done Felix, you are a natural! Well, I wouldn’t say that. But it was a lot of fun. -Yes. -Cool! -Hopefully, Lewis and George will be happy with that. -I hope so. Shall we see where the engines get tested? Let’s go to dyno.
-Thank you very much! -It was nice to meet you. This is the Formula One dyno area, where we do all our experiments to make sure that the parts are tested thoroughly before they hit the track. We also have a similar tool to the RSR in Brackley, the trackside support office. We can support the race from here and don’t have to send so many people to the track.
All the data comes back live and we can react and make sure the engine is healthy and so on. I will take you back to AMG ONE, where Adam can pick you up. Cool, thank you! I hope you enjoyed looking around. We are back and Adam will show you Project ONE. -Awesome! -Thanks, Pierre! So Felix, you know hopefully most of our secrets but not all, Pierre? Not all of them. OK, great! Let us talk about how Formula One moves into AMG ONE.
Absolutely! Cool! Let’s do that. Thank you, Pierre. OK, let us go upstairs. Felix, here we are in the hybrid technical centre. It looks really familiar to what you have seen over the road. Lots of people working here! Lots of people working, lots of engineers. Same environment, really open plan. We try to encourage lots of communication, lots of innovation.
And have that ad hoc bumping into someone, have a conversation over a coffee. That is where great ideas get founded. Cool! So, we have another power unit, the 2015 power unit. But you know all about that now. So let us talk a little about AMG ONE. And how the power unit translated into that.
Awesome! The rear axle really is a Formula One power unit. OK. Same as we have described and discussed earlier. When we get to the battery: we needed more energy. So we have four times the amount of cells. -Four times?! -Four times.
Still the F1 cell, same cell. But four times as many to give us a larger amount of energy. And therefore serving the needs of AMG ONE. We have twice the amount of electric motors.
On the front axle, we have one electric motor on each corner, independent. These motors are the MGU-Ks. So that means another 120 kW on each side.
That is 240 kW of power on the front axle, where you can control them totally independently. So actually the same concept as an F1 but just more power. That sounds like just the right mixture. Exactly. Then, when we start to think about chassis dynamics, the ability to go into torque vector, it gives us a massively flexible powertrain. Really complex, but super potent. Shall we go and see more?
Absolutely, you lead the way. So Felix, you have an idea of the layout of AMG ONE. As you know, we had lots of technical challenges.
One of them was NVH: noise, vibration, harshness. Which surprised us. This is not normal for us in Formula One. Let us chat about the challenge with the electric machines, the MGU-K. And what we had to change, and why. I would like to introduce you to Stuart.
-Nice to meet you. -Hello Felix, welcome. Stuart is a team leader and has been involved at the heart of AMG ONE. Stuart, can you explain a little bit about what we needed to change from a F1 MGU-K to get NVH that is more than acceptable for our customers while retaining all of the performance. Yes. For the AMG ONE hypercar, we take F1 technology and apply that to the road car. We took the MGU-K, which is the 120 kW motor attached to the crankshaft.
And we needed to use that in the same location for AMG ONE, but also use that motor for driving the front wheels. It is a 4-wheel-drive architecture. We took that technology, designed our own gearbox to attach that motor to. Then we worked with our colleagues at AMG, the specialists on NVH, did the testing with them, they used their specialist equipment.
And we measured the NVH. For us at HPP and in Formula One, NVH is not normally an issue. I figured, yes. Not a priority. Yes. So this was new for us, which is why we used our colleagues at AMG. We measured the NVH values because it is a legislative requirement.
Yes. For the drive-by tests, the values were 74 dB. That is the target we had to achieve. How do you figure out how to improve NVH? Within HPP, we have experts for electromagnetic simulation and electromagnetic motors. So we called upon their expertise, but that was all in theory and simulation. My team’s task was to turn that into reality.
We look at what hardware we need to change, at different winding technologies, different materials, stiffening housings and covers. Different speed sensors for road car safety application was another aspect. NVH covers different materials.
Also looking at the thermal properties of the architecture we proposed. Cooling was especially difficult with the new winding layout for the 24 slots machine that we changed to. OK. 24 slots, what does that mean?
That is the electromagnet you set up with the coils. The number of slots in the stator is 24. That is higher than in Formula One. So the more coils you got, the better the NVH.
Is that something you could say about the MGU-K? In our case, yes. Nice! May we take a closer look at that? So, here on the left, you see the 3-D CAD of the final MGU-K technology. The internals of this are the same as the MGU-F on the front axle. OK. So that is mounted to the crankshaft and that is on the front axle.
That is on the front axle gearbox. For the front wheels. One on each side. So there is three of these.
Two of these and one MGU-K per powertrain. And here we have the physical hardware. -It is quite compact when you see it in person. -Yes. It looks almost like the one we saw at the powertrain downstairs. When it was mounted on the engine.
Yes. One of the main considerations for us also was to meet the NVH requirements. Because that was a legislative requirement. But this is also a hypercar, Formula One technology. So we could not compromise on the performance. That 120 kW performance level that we have in F1 had to be achieved on our new architecture while also meeting NVH.
Could we maybe take a look inside? How these different coils come together? I can take you downstairs, we can look at build, walk through the build process. And also look at some of the automation challenges we had. That would be super cool. Because we have 3 of these motors per vehicle, so about 1,000 motors.
That is also a big challenge for us in terms of process and efficiency. -A lot of coil winding. -Yes. -Let us take a look. You lead the way. -OK. This is really next level. I feel like we are walking into an OR.
Yes. This is the motor build area, where we obviously have very high standards of cleanliness. Here, we have various stages of the stator build.
These are the internals of the motor that you saw upstairs, the physical, finished motor and the CAD on the screen. These are the slots in the stator, which we spoke about. -The 24. -The 24 slots.
Internally to there, they are made up of lamination levels, which reduces the eddy current losses to maximize the efficiency. We have been able to match the efficiency of the Formula One motors. Wow! Crazy cool! How do you put all that together? Miles and miles of copper wiring. This is a different architecture to the F1 motors, which was new to us at HPP. Within Formula One and for our development motors, we hand wind them.
But for Project ONE, we have to make up to 1000 motors. So the time constraint, or the time impact on winding these by hand, and also the quality and repeatability of doing that manual process, was not suitable for the AMG hypercar. Based on that, we have an internal HPP automation team. They have developed in-house new technology and tooling bespoke to HPP and to this project, which we can now look at inside the build room. I can’t believe we are looking at the components of the road-going version of the AMG ONE, the car that has been awaited for so long. This is where it is put together.
Yes, this is the coiling insertion machine developed within HPP. -That looks insanely complicated! Almost like a Christmas tree. -Yes. That will then move up and down and rotate? How does that work exactly? We can get an example of it in use. Perfect! One of the challenges here is to ensure that we don’t snag any wires on the way in.
So we have another machine inspecting the quality of the full length of wire prior to this stage. Oh, yes. So now it is doing all the inspecting, and seeing if everything is in the state that it should be. Yes, visual inspection processes are part of this machine.
-That is what we see on that screen here? -Yes. I can’t believe I actually get to watch this. This is going into an AMG ONE that will be on the road very soon. The insertion loads are also measured as part of this process. It drives the coils up into the stator housing.
This is how we reach that finished coil round assembly. On the automotive site, we have the added constraints of legislative requirements, which includes NVH specifically for this. With this machinery, you manage to achieve a high level of repeated quality of the highest standard.
Yes, it improves the efficiency as we strive for efficiency throughout every area of HPP. This improves the yield and the quality of the finished product. Then this machinery drives the copper wire into all 24 slots until the whole stator is just packed with wiring. Yes, that’s it. The fill efficiency, the amount of copper
that we can repeatedly achieve inside of the electrical machine, helps with the efficiency as well. After the coil winding process, there are various stages of the electric motor manufacturing sequence, to result in the finished components you have seen upstairs. Then, that component has been through various validation tests to ensure that all we set out to achieve was actually achieved in development. Now we have that in production. Let us see one of these electric motors running with the rest of the powertrain around some laps of Nürburgring. Oh absolutely yes! OK. Let’s go to the dyno.
Awesome! Felix, as part of the durability and validation prove out, we have to physically test what we have designed and the whole team have built. In these rig rooms on the left, we can do component testing. Once we are sure that this component is durable and achieves the performance and other parameters, we then progress into the dyno, where we run the full powertrain. Here we replicate everything you see under the cover of that car in real life. Awesome! You might be able to hear something, Felix. Yes, a slight buzz in the background.
A slight buzz. So, dyno 7 behind us. The AMG ONE powertrain has absolved 100,000 of kilometres of durability testing. -Nice! -Do you want to see it? -Of course! -Let us take a look. Felix, welcome to dyno 7! There it is! And it is alive. There it is naked.
Wow! What we have here: imagine you are standing behind AMG ONE. Wow! We have the rear axle. You can see the wheels effectively spinning to replicate all the real loads.
The engine is running, with the battery in front of it, exactly in the real position. In front of that, we have the front axle; you can’t really see that well from here. We basically have the whole car without the chassis. Crazy. It looks like it is on a life-support machine.
That is exactly what it is. Our dyno guys, they create the environment. They make sure that all life-support systems are at the right temperatures, pressures, and flow-rates. So that the powertrain thinks it is actually doing a lap of the Nordschleife.
That is what it’s doing right now. It is actually on the Nordschleife. Wow! As part of our normal prove out that we have done with AMG ONE, we have done thousands of different laps.
We have country laps to simulate going cross-country. City cycles, EV driving. But where is AMG ONE at home? -On the Nordschleife, on the racetrack. -On the racetrack, yes.
You have all the power, all the aero, the downforce. That is where AMG ONE comes to life, that is where our customers will really see how special it is. Because they have a Formula One power unit in the back of their car. And a modified part of that at the front that gives them over 1000 hp.
That is so cool! Amazing to see how it all comes together over the years, all the development process, so many different parts and so many different people coming together to create this. Now it is on the road and I can see it here on the dyno. That is just surreal. Exactly. Now I think you have a feeling for the complexity. Our customers have shared a difficult journey; we never knew it would be this difficult. But we have come across those challenges and we have worked as a team. The relationship here at HPP and AMG, you might feel it is quite similar? Actually, yes.
Yes, even in terms of its location. It is out in the countryside. Brixworth and Affalterbach are a little similar. And the environment equally. We want people to be working to give us the best product, whether it is Formula 1, AMG ONE, any of our advanced technology projects. You can really feel this when talking to the people here and in Affalterbach, the level of passion for the product, for their jobs, is so high.
Over there and right here as well, that is really what makes it even more special, getting to know the people behind this amazing project. It all comes together beautifully and you see lots of parallels between Brixworth and Affalterbach. Exactly. And the people make the difference. The great facilities, the amazing infrastructure - you need it. But making the best use of it, that is about the team. That is about the people, about the hunger.
That obsessive madness of chasing performance, of chasing efficiency, of chasing every win that you can. So you have seen AMG ONE on the test bench. -How about we go and have a drive? -You are kidding.
-On the road. -Really?! -Let us do it. -Absolutely! Nice! Here she is, AMG ONE. Awesome! Shall we take it for a ride? -Absolutely. Nice! -Let us do that.
There you have it. A jam-packed double feature comes to an end. I can’t believe the level of engineering, excellence and passion that goes into F1 cars and this car, the Mercedes-AMG ONE, as well. That is on the road now, absolutely unbelievable! Thank you to the guys at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team at Brackley and at Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains in Brixworth.
It has been truly amazing. If you liked this video, don’t forget to give us a like. Drop us a comment with your topic suggestions. Subscribe to the channel, also hit the bell icon to get notified of new videos. For Adam and I, it is now time to go for a spin. -Let us have some fun. -Oh yeah!
2023-02-21 18:21
