Thread: Acceleration email

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Read this thru slowly and try to comprehend the amount of force produced in just under 4 seconds!
There are no rockets or airplanes built by any government in the world that can accelerate from a standing start as fast as a Top Fuel Dragster or Funny Car!



DEFINITION OF ACCELERATION

One top fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows of stock cars at the Daytona 500.

It takes just 15/100ths of a second for all 6,000+ horsepower of an NHRA Top Fuel dragster engine to reach the rear wheels.

Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1-1/2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.

A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster's supercharger.

With 3,000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition.

Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.

At the stoichiometric (stoichiometry: methodology and technology by which quantities of reactants and products in chemical reactions are determined) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture of nitro methane, the flame front temperature measures 7,050 deg F.

Nitro methane burns yellow... The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.

Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.

Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. A fter halfway, the engine is dieseling from compression, plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1,400 deg F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.

If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.

In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4G's. In order to reach 200 mph (well before half-track), the launch acceleration approaches 8G's.

Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence.

Top fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light! Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.

I got this email about acceleration and had to pass it on. I don't know if the individual facts are correct but it was interesting to say the least!

The redline is actually quite high at 9,500 rpm.

A ssuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimate $1,000.00 per second.

The current top fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.428 seconds for the quarter mile (11/12/06, Tony Schumacher, at Pomona , CA ). The top speed record is 336.15 mph as measured over the last 66' of the run (05/25/05 Tony Schumacher, at Hebron , OH ).

Putting all of this into perspective:

You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter 'twin-turbo' powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a top fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the 'Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and pass the dragster at an honest 200 mph. The 'tree' goes green for both of you at that moment.

The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds, the dragster catches and passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you just passed him.

Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1,320 foot long race course.

...... and that my friend, is ACCELERATION!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tg6R...1&feature=fvwp

yes it is. it is my greatest dream to go that fast just once.

Steve, I've seen that before but even reading it again is just hard to comprehend how fast the dragster is going to pass the Vette.

Thanks, that gets me going just thinking about it.

Richard

I know, I kept thinking somebody is making up these numbers, but then you watch a drag race and think, Holy Cow!

Originally Posted by stovens

I know, I kept thinking somebody is making up these numbers, but then you watch a drag race and think, Holy Cow!

I had a hard time accepting the numbers so I ran some basics and was surprised. Assuming a constant 200mph on the Vette it does the quarter in a flat 4.5sec. Assuming a record run by the dragster means the he beats the Vette by 0.072 seconds. Again assuming that at that point the dragster is at a peak speed (not really true, but pretty close) he travels 35.5 feet in that time span so he will pass the Vette at the 1285' mark. Now calculating back, at 200mph the Vette is going 293.3ft/sec, so he passes the 1285' mark at 4.38 seconds. The only thing I see wrong is the "...within three seconds...." point in time. Dragster wins, but he better not miss the light much

Pretty amazing isn't it! A car going over three hundred miles per hour.

Well that would have been true until the last Top Fuel rules change. Today they only race a 1,000 foot track in top fuel and funny car.

RS

Why the change Hombre?

They reduced the distance after Scott Kalitta was killed in a horrific crash where he ran off the end of the track and hit a "safety" barrier in 2008. It was initially stated as temporary, but the top fuel and fuel funny cars are now going so fast that many of the tracks do not have sufficient shut down area if the cars have any sort of braking or parachute failure. All the rest of the classes are still running 1320.