Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1475671
COVER STORY 10 | July - August 2022 | www . machinerylubrication.com be at peak performance on race day — but even the fastest car in the world will not win championships if it is not highly reliable. But how do fluid monitoring and flushing fit into that picture? Formula One cars don't just have an internal combustion engine; they have what is known as a Power Unit or PU. e PU brings together both internal combustion power and electrical power to give cars the ability to "harvest" energy and store it in the Energy Storage System (ESS) strategically during one lap to then release it in another, giving the car an electrical speed boost on command. is system uses a lithium-ion battery that must perform under extreme conditions — not just at high speeds but in drastically different environments around the world. One week a Grand Prix might be cool and rainy in Canada, with another race in the desert environment of Saudi Arabia two weeks later. In both environments, the battery has to be kept at the optimal temperature through cycles of charging and discharging during a race. But one racing team was struggling with a chronic fluid contamination problem, and they were spending over two hours flushing and filtering the system only to fail to achieve the Recommended Cleanliness Level (RCL) time and again, so they called Wayne. Contamination Solution RCC's v fit the bill perfectly, and this particular rig was outfitted with 23 different sensors, monitoring temperature, fluid level, f low, f ilter differential, pressure, particle counts, relative humidity and water content. Its ability to both monitor and clean the temperature control f luid (sometimes a water/glycol mixture, but in this case a fully synthetic PAO) while outputting detailed data to a cloud dashboard was just what the team needed. ey also needed help selecting the right Beta-rated filters to properly remove the fluid-borne contaminants to cut down on flushing time between races. Hydrodynamics History If you're a regular reader of Machinery Lubrication, you can probably spot that Reynolds Contamination Control takes their company name from a hero of hydrodynamics, Osborne Reynolds. Born in Belfast, Ireland, Osborne Reynolds (August 23, 1842 - February 21, 1912) was a British fluid dynamics engineer who studied conditions in which the flow of fluid in pipes transitioned from laminar to turbulent. The result of Reynolds' studies was a dimensionless number (Reynolds Number) representing the ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces. Flow typically changes from laminar to turbulent between Reynolds numbers 2,000 and 4,000. Turbulent flow, with a high Reynolds number, sharply improves the effectiveness of flushing tasks. "ONE RACING TEAM WAS STRUGGLING WITH A CHRONIC FLUID CONTAMINATION PROBLEM"