When a vehicle accelerates lateronally at more than 1.0G through a corner on a racetrack or in an intense driving scenario, the fuel level in the fuel tank will tilt significantly, with an Angle of 20 to 30 degrees. This leads to a relatively high risk of exposure to the air at the suction end of traditional cylindrical oil pumps. The engineering report of the German company Bosch indicates that after a standard roller gasoline pump has been running dry continuously for more than 2 seconds, the temperature of the pump core can rapidly rise above 180°C, which is 2.25 times its normal operating temperature (below 80°C). This will directly lead to abnormal wear between the rollers and the inner wall of the pump casing. In the 2021 Nurburgring 24 Hours Endurance race, at least two competing cars experienced a sudden drop in fuel pressure during the S-turn due to the lack of targeted solutions. Each power interruption lasted for 0.8 seconds, nearly causing them to run off the track.
The core problem caused by dry running lies in lubrication failure and heat accumulation. Analysis in the materials laboratory shows that when there is a lack of fuel medium, the wear rate of the friction pairs inside the oil pump (such as carbon brushes and commutators) will increase by 40 times. The measured data from the performance department of Mercedes-Benz AMG confirmed that in the bench test simulating the track conditions, after experiencing 15 consecutive sharp left turns of 1.3G, the bearing life of the unoptimized Fuel Pump decayed by 67%. The high-temperature resistant pump core with silicon carbide coating can increase the dry running endurance time from the industry average of 3.5 seconds to 9 seconds, but the cost increases by approximately 35%.
The Swirl Pot is an effective solution to deal with the interference of lateral forces. This device increases the effective oil suction depth to 80mm by forming a ring-shaped oil groove with a diameter of 150-200mm around the pump suction inlet. The measured system developed by Magna for the Porsche 911 GT3 RS shows that it can still maintain a stable flow rate of 7.5L/min under a lateral acceleration of 1.5G. However, the vortex tank will occupy approximately 8% of the fuel tank volume, which may lead to a 50-kilometer reduction in range for compact models (WLTC standard).
The dry running protection system requires the coordination of hardware and software. The intelligent pump module developed by Continental integrates a pressure sensor and can reduce the power consumption of the pump body from the nominal 120W to 50W within 0.1 seconds through ECU instructions when the inlet pressure is lower than 0.2 bar. The application of General Motors in the Corvette Z06 shows that the system has reduced the rate of fuel supply interruption accidents caused by cornering by 82%. The unit price of such systems increases by approximately 85, but a positive return on investment (ROI) can be generated by avoiding the maintenance cost of oil pump damage on a single track day (averaging 420).
The characteristics of oil products also affect the risk probability. Studies show that when the gasoline density is within the range of 0.72-0.77 g/cm³, for every 0.01 g/cm³ reduction, the exposure probability of the fuel pump of the vehicle at the same cornering speed will increase by 5.8%. Therefore, low-viscosity racing fuel (such as No. 100 aviation gasoline with a density of 0.715g /cm³) needs to be combined with higher standards of anti-dry running measures. According to statistics from the SEMA Institute in the United States, fuel pump failures caused by the use of non-standard fuel account for 17.3% of mechanical failures of track vehicles.
Taking into account both engineering specifications and economic considerations, when a vehicle is expected to perform frequent cornering driving exceeding 0.8G (such as ≥2 track days per month), it is necessary to invest in a fuel pump system that includes vortex grooves, wide-range pressure sensors, and high-temperature resistant materials. Ignoring this issue may lead to a 300% increase in the annual maintenance cost and there is a high risk of withdrawal from the competition (the probability of historical event data statistics is approximately 6.4%).