【翻译】BTCC混动赛车幕后的工程挑战

原文标题:
Inside the engineering challenge of getting BTCC hybrid-ready
原文链接:https://www.autosport.com/btcc/news/inside-the-engineering-challenge-of-getting-btcc-hybrid-ready/10334482/
作者:John Waterman
原文发布时间:2022.6.8
翻译/封面:ApexNova
(由于译者外语水平/专业知识不过关+常态化放飞自我式翻译,本文采用中英双语对照格式)

As well as race engineering four-time British Touring Car Championship-winner Colin Turkington, John Waterman led West Surrey Racing's work on implementing the hybrid system into its BMW 330e M Sport. As he explains, there's much more to it than simply plug-and-play...
除了担任四届BTCC冠军Colin Turkington的比赛工程师,John Waterman还领导了West Surrey Racing将混合动力系统落实到宝马330e M Sport赛车中的工作。正如他所解释的那样,这套系统远非“即插即用”那么简单…


Developing a car for the hybrid era of the British Touring Car Championship has been a challenging but satisfying job.
为BTCC的混合动力时代开发一台赛车,是一项极具挑战性但又令人满意的工作。
The first thing that had to change was the bellhousing, because unlike front-wheel drive, which have a modified Xtrac casing to take the hybrid motor on the outside of the casing, we were putting it in line with the gearbox, so it was a new Xtrac casing for us, and a new bellhousing because of that.
首先必须被修改的是变速箱外壳,因为和前驱赛车不同的是,他们有一个定制的Xtrac护罩,允许在保护罩的外侧安装混动系统的电机。而我们要将电机和变速箱结合到一起,所以我们需要一个新的Xtrac护罩,因此还需要一个新的变速箱外壳。
Battery position between front and rear-wheel drive was down to TOCA, who did C of G calculations to tell us where we were going to put it. Unfortunately for us, this pushed the battery for rear-wheel drive as far forward as it could go. So, I had to do a lot of toing and froing when the initial schemes came out, and eventually we got them to turn the battery around – it was supposed to be facing the other way, but the control unit (MCU) was going to be in our engine bay!
前驱及后驱赛车的电池组安放位置是由TOCA决定的,他们做了COG计算来告诉我们该把电池放在哪。但不幸的是,这套方案将后驱赛车的电池组朝前推到了非常极限的位置。因此,当初版方案发布时,我不得不做了很多工作,最终我们让他们调转了电池的方向——它应该朝向另一面,但是控制单元(MCU)被扔进了我们的发动机舱!
Because that meant some of the weight came backwards, they had to compensate for front-wheel drive, so now front-wheel drive has a maximum rearward and minimum forward position whereas RWD has just one position. But that’s the way it goes!
因为这些方案意味着一些负重会向后放置,所以他们不得不对前驱赛车作出一些补偿,所以现在的前驱赛车在后方有着很大的调整空间而前方的很小,后驱赛车则只能在一个方向上作出改变。但事情的发展就该是这样!
We didn’t get the hybrid kit until late February, but up until then we had all the drawings from Cosworth, we knew the position the battery had to be, so basically, I just designed all the bracketry to hold it in place in the passenger footwell where it had to go, and all the other stuff that goes with it.
我们在二月的晚些时候才拿到混合动力套件,但在那之前我们有来自Cosworth的图纸,知道该把电池装在哪里。所以我基本上只是设计了所有的支架来将它们固定到副驾驶的地板上——这是它应该在的位置,而其他的附件也被放在了一块。

We had to move electrical boxes, so had to redesign trays to make the boxes stack – we don’t usually have them stacking, but we were running out of room basically. It was a packaging exercise more than anything. We used EY3 Engineering to assist with the front bumper surfacing that incorporated the ducts for the LTRs, which are situated under each headlight, one for ESS battery cooling and one for the EV motor and MCU.
我们移动了接线盒的位置,所以不得不重新设计了托盘以让它们堆叠起来——我们通常不会让它们堆叠,但我们也腾不出更多空间了。相比于其他事情,这最像是一个打包的工作。我们让EY3 Engineering来协助设计前保险杠表面的冷却管道入口——就是头灯下方的那些,其中一条负责电池的冷却,另一个则通向电动机和MCU。
There was a rear-wheel-drive hybrid test car – the Ciceley Motorsport 1 Series BMW, built and supplied by WSR. But as Cosworth ran the test, you weren’t allowed to look at any data, and they had their own drivers. They didn’t run anywhere near enough kilometres and what running they did do was in winter temperatures, so there have been some problems this season.
我们拥有一辆后轮驱动的混合动力测试车——Ciceley Motorsport的宝马1系,由WSR制造并提供,但测试工作是Cosworth来负责,你不被允许观测任何数据,他们也有着自己的车手。而他们的测试里程数并不够,并且还是在冬季的低温中行驶,所以在本赛季中出现了一些问题。
Basically, the EV motor was designed to be shared between all the cars like a common part, as TOCA parts are, and the bracketry for it was just holding the motor in line with the gearbox on a transverse engine. For the rear-wheel-drive because we’re in-line, it turns the motor 90 degrees so now that little bracket was trying to stop the motor going backwards and forwards under braking and acceleration. And then coupled with some early tolerancing issues, the whole unit would flex.
电动机在大体上被设计为可以在所有的赛车之间共用,就像TOCA的零件那样,它的支架只是为了让电机与横置发动机的变速箱之间保持稳定的连接。而对于后驱赛车而言,因为我们使用的是直列式布局,发动机旋转了90度,所以那个支架还要在加速或者制动时阻止发动机的位移。加上一些早期存在的公差问题,使得整个装置发生了弯曲。
These issues became apparent when we started running at the first round and I had to quickly come up with a solution to support the bracket better, to stop everything flexing. The brace I designed was also supplied, in principle, for the Infiniti.
当我们开始第一轮比赛的时候,这些问题就变得非常明显。我不得不迅速想出一个解决方案来提高支架的强度,以防止任何弯曲现象。原则上,我设计的这些支架也会提供给英菲尼迪。
There’s also been an issue with heat-soak to the EV motor when the car’s in the garage. So we’ve used the driver fan to duct air into that area on the motor, which seems to have worked out OK so far. The drivers are now cooled via a hose from a NACA duct in the rear window.
还有一个问题是,当赛车在车库中时,电机会发生“热浸”现象。因此,我们使用了车手位置的风扇将空气引导至电机所在的位置,这招到目前为止还比较管用。现在,车手通过后窗NACA管道上设置的软管进行降温。
We not only did the hybrid this year, but we also repackaged the intercooler, radiator and their cooling ducts for better airflow under the bonnet. We’ve got louvres in the bonnets now; it’s all to do with airflow to keep the charge temperature down because we were suffering in races with it getting hot when we were up behind cars. I think that, plus a little bit of aero work that we’ve done, has been another step forward for the car. It’s been worth all the extra work over the winter.
今年,我们不止做了混合动力系统,而且还为中冷器、散热器以及它们的冷却管道重制了外包装,让引擎盖之下的空气流动更加顺畅。我们现在还在引擎盖上开出了百叶窗,以保持气流顺畅来持久地降低进气的温度,因为我们苦恼于在比赛中跟车时发生的温度上升现象。我认为关于这一点,再加上我们所做的一点空气动力学改进,对于赛车来说是又一个进步。这让这个冬天的所有额外工作都是值得的。
Now I just wish we could get back the boost we are supposed to have so we can show our true performance this year.
现在,我只希望我们能找回我们本应拥有的性能,这样我们就能在今年展示自己的真正实力。

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