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totally ignorant about the importance of mass factors. Thanks to a good beating on
by fellow member bruce.augenstein@comcast, I'm a bit wiser on this topic today...
The motivation here is threefold:
1. A better understanding of this somewhat confusing topic.
2. Improving vehicle performance simulation efforts.
3. Helping understand dyno performance and potential under rating.
I'll try to cover some of the basic physics here and I'm also providing a very detailed
approximate calculation for the mass factors for the E9X M3 and F82 M4. I'll also
discuss a bit of simulation results and sensitivity and accuracy.
Drivetrain Inertia:
The relevant components that spin in the entire drivetrain must be accounted for in
the formulas and simulation for vehicle performance. These components include
engine, flywheel, transmission, drive shaft, differential, axles and
wheels/tires/brakes. There are some other insignificant components as well like
bearing, which in some places are included in my calculations and in other places are
not. Following Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics by Gillespie, with some obvious
extensions to equation 2-9b and using SI units, we can write (for no incline, no hitch
load)
This is basically a clever application of F=ma and T=I with the understanding of
imperfect (lossy) transmission through the entire system. Please note inertia and
losses are not at all the same mechanism nor the same effect. Losses reduce torque
or power and are "lossy" the power is truly lost to friction, thus heat and windage
losses, whereas spinning drivetrain components act precisely like additional mass in
the vehicle. If you coast with the clutch in, the rotational kinetic energy stored in the
spinning components slow the loss of speed (deceleration) to true losses such as
aero and tires making the vehicle "feel" heavier. Also on the flip side when power
shifting during acceleration or when a DCT does the same, some of this
engine/flywheel/clutch inertia is "dumped" inelastically (i.e. angular momentum is
conserved but not energy) into the drivetrain providing a short transient bump up in
vehicle acceleration.
Here are the relevant definitions/descriptions:
Equation (1) is simple, vehicle acceleration follows torque to the wheels (after
losses) minus wheel rolling drag minus aerodynamic drag force. (2) is pretty much
the definition of the mass factor. It is a sum of inertia weighted by gear ratios and
gear ratios squared, normalizing the terms to make them dimensionless as is mass
factor itself (by r and m). From (1) and (2) if the vehicle has no rotating drive train
components the mass factor is 1 and the denominator of the acceleration equation is
simply vehicle mass. As the inertia of the drive train components increase (weight
and size, more on that later) the vehicle responds exactly like it is simply heavier
but indeed more than heavier by just the increased weight of the components. Their
is no approximation here. This is exact, simple Newtonian physics. Mass factor is still
quite rigorous and exact. The only approximation is that the drivetrain losses can all
be represented by power transmitted = power input x efficiency and efficiency does
not have to be constant but is always taken as such with this being understood to be
a very good approximation.
Fig 1: Sample transmission photos used for transmission component size estimations
No, these are not the M3's transmissions. I couldn't find relevant pictures of those
(MTs) but this level of approximation will find pretty well the same answer for these
and the M3/4 anyway. Unfortunately this inspection/estimation method is quite a bit
less obvious when attempting to do the same for an automatic transmission or
DCT...
You can download the entire xlsx file here. I had to ignore the error
about a large file and use the File menu to download it. I would be surprised if all of
As you can see mass factors are very significant! In first gear your M3 will accelerate
like to weighs 129-136% of its scale weight due to drivetrain inertia. That can be as
much as 1350 lb! About 90% of this is due to engine/flywheel/clutch and the part of
the transmission rotating at engine speed. About 80% of that is due to engine,
flywheel and clutch with each contributing roughly equally.
The results steadily decline across gears such that in the higher/highest gears only
the wheel/brake/axle contributions are important and amount to about an extra 5%
of total mass.
The three (labeled) columns below the main table of mass factors are again
analytical formulas for mass factors (quite obviously semi-empirical) to avoid a
requirement for the level of detail shown in this spreadsheet. The literature sources
are provided in the spreadsheet. The second column, Bernd Heiing and Metin Ersoy
does the closest job in comparison to this detailed calculation in low gears whereas
the third column from author J.Y. Wong does a much better job in the higher gears.
Fig 3: Comparison of Authors Vehicle Simulation using the mass factors in Fig 2 vs.
CarTest E92 M3 M-DCT
Uncertainties:
Using this as a live spreadsheet we can answer a huge number of what if, sensitivity
and accuracy questions about our calculated mass factors. What if the E92 estimated
engine inertia is off by a full factor of 1/2? The first and second gear F8X M-DCT
mass factors change to 1.361 and 1.135 respectively. 1st gear only changes by 2%.
All other mass factors are the same within 1%. What if we underestimated the F8X
DCT flywheel radius by 25%? That "whopper" changes the 1st gear mass factor (mf)
by nearly 4%. The transmission values were some of the "rougher" estimates I
made. What if the transmission has twice this total inertia? This also has about a 4%
change in the 1st gear mf and less than a 1% change in gears 3 and above. What is
the wheel inertia is actually 25% larger than my estimate? This only makes less than
a 1% change in all mf. What if the axles were truly weightless? This would not
change any mf out to 3 decimal places.
Clearly I have underestimated some masses/radii/inertias and overestimated others.
The lucky thing about having so many inputs is that much of these errors cancel.
This is no excuse for sloppy work but again without 3D CAD this is really tough
estimation type of work. Based on this very simple sensitivity analysis I'm
Conclusions:
Mass factors rigorously represent the power used in accelerating all rotating drive
train components dynamically as added mass that varies with gear.
Mass factors can be calculated very precisely from nothing more than material
densities and 3D CAD drawings. Since this typically is not available, a simple
geometric estimation approach can still yield reasonable accuracy.
More accurate semi-empirical formula for how mass factors might scale with
vehicle mass, vehicle power or torque and wheel/tire sizes would be highly
valuable toward making simulation more a-priori accurate across a diverse range
of vehicles. No existing mass factor formulas appear accurate enough for a
desired level of simulation. However, the Bernd Heiing and Metin Ersoy are by
far the closest for most common vehicle performance metrics.
The equations and principles here could be extended to include the effect of a large
radius inertial dyno hub wheel and might provide insight into the investigation of M4
dyno "over achievement".