TURBOCHARGER AND SUPERCHARGER Turbocharger A turbocharger or turbo (colloquialism), from the Greek "" (mixing/spinning) is a forced induction device

used to allow more power to be produced for an engine of a given size. The key difference between a turbocharger and a conventional supercharger is that the latter is mechanically driven from the engine often from a belt connected to the crankshaft, whereas a turbocharger is driven by the engine's exhaust gas turbine. A turbocharged engine can be more powerful and efficient than a naturally aspirated engine because the turbine forces more intake air, proportionately more fuel, into the combustion chamber than if atmospheric pressure alone is used. Turbos are commonly used on truck, car, train and construction equipment engines. Turbos are popularly used with Otto cycle and Diesel cycle internal combustion engines. They have also been found useful in automotive fuel cells. Why we use turbochargers and how does it works? The purpose of a turbocharger is to compress the air flowing into the diesel engine, this lets the engine squeeze more air into a cylinder and more air means that more fuel can be added. The engine burns air and fuel to create mechanical power, the more air and fuel it can burn the more powerful it is. In simple terms, a turbocharger comprises of a turbine and a compressor connected by a common shaft supported on a bearing system. The turbocharger converts waste energy from an engine's exhaust gases into compressed air, which it pushes into the engine. This allows the engine to burn more fuel producing more power and improves the overall efficiency of the combustion process. The turbine consists of two components; the turbine wheel and the collector, commonly referred to as the turbine housing . The exhaust gas is guided into the turbine wheel by the housing. The energy in the exhaust gas turns the turbine.

Once the gas has passed through the blades of the wheel it leaves the turbine housing via the exhaust outlet area. Compressors are the opposite of turbines. They consist of two sections, the impeller or compressor wheel and the compressor housing . The compressor wheel is connected to the turbine by a forged steel shaft. As the compressor wheel spins, air is drawn in and is compressed as the blades spin at a high velocity. The housing is designed to convert the high velocity, low pressure air stream, into a high pressure low velocity air stream, through a process called diffusion. In order to achieve this boost, the turbocharger uses the exhaust flow from the engine to spin a turbine, which in turn spins an air pump. The turbine in the turbocharger spins at speeds of up to 200 krpm rotations per minute (rpm) that is about 30 times faster than most car engines can go. Since it is connected to the exhaust, the temperatures in the turbine are also very high. Air enters the compressor at a temperature equivalent to atmosphere. However, as compression causes the temperature of the air to rise it leaves the compressor cover at temperatures up to 200 degrees celcius. The turbocharger bearing system is lubricated by oil from the engine. The oil is fed under pressure into the bearing housing , through to the journal bearings and thrust system. The oil also acts as a coolant taking away heat generated by the turbine. The Journal Bearings are a free-floating rotational type. To perform correctly, the journal bearings float between two films of oil. The bearing clearances are very small, less than the width of a human hair. Dirty oil or blockages in the oil supply holes can cause serious damage to the turbocharger. Turbocharger Components Bearing housing A grey cast iron bearing housing provides locations for a fully-floating bearing system for the shaft, turbine and compressor which can rotate at speeds up to 200 krpm. Shell moulding is used to provide positional accuracy of critical features of the housing such as the shaft bearing and seal locations.

CNC machinery mills, turns, drills and taps housing faces and connections. The bore is finish honed to meet stringent roundness, straightness and surface finish specifications.

Turbine wheel The turbine wheel is made from a high nickel superalloy investment casting. This method produces accurate turbine blade sections and forms. Larger units are cast individually. For smaller sizes the foundry will cast multiple wheels using a tree configuration.

shaft and turbine wheel assembly

The forged steel shaft is friction welded to the turbine wheel. The turbine blade edges

are machined for accurate trim within the turbine housing. The shaft bearing journals are induction hardened and ground for dimensional accuracy. journal bearing arrangement

Journal bearings are manufactured from specially developed bronze or brass bearing alloys. The manufacturing process is designed to create geometric tolerances and surface finishes to suit very high speed operation.

thrust bearing Hardened steel thrust collars and oil slingers are manufactured to strict tolerances using lapping. End thrust is absorbed in a bronze hydrodynamic thrust bearing located at the compressor end of the shaft assembly. Careful sizing provides adequate load bearing capacity without excessive losses.

compressor impeller and fastener Compressor impellers are produced using a variant of the aluminium investment casting process. A rubber former is made to replicate the impeller around which a casting mould is created. The rubber former can then be extracted from the mould into which the metal is poured. Accurate blade sections and profiles are important in

achieving compressor performance. Back face profile machining optimises impeller stress conditions. Boring to tight tolerance and burnishing assist balancing and fatigue resistance. The impeller is located on the shaft assembly using a threaded nut.

Compressor Cover

Compressor housings are also made in cast aluminium (cast iron for high-pressure applications). Various grades are used to suit the application. Both gravity die and sand casting techniques are used. Profile machining to match the developed compressor blade shape is important to achieve performance consistency. Why Turbocharge To increase the power from your engine you can increase the size of the engine (swept volume) or increase the mass of the air/fuel charge compressed in the cylinders by using a supercharger or a turbocharger. Increase the Engine Size To develop more power you can increase the engine size so that a greater mass of air/fuel is burnt. This results in higher fuel costs as more fuel is burnt. Also the engine is heavier/larger as the vehicle is carrying more load and the vehicle needs to be larger to take the engine. At high altitudes, there is insufficient oxygen to burn the fuel, resulting in low power and black smoke. Supercharge

A supercharger increases the pressure of the air in the inlet manifold of the engine. As the air pressure is greater than atmospheric pressure it has a higher density i.e. more oxygen per litre of air. When the inlet valve in the cylinder opens a greater mass of air rushes into the cylinder to be burnt with the fuel. More power is generated at each engine speed but the supercharger is driven direct from the engine. So, theoretically a supercharger could increase a 200hp engine to a 275hp engine. However as it is an engine parasite it needs 50hp to operate therefore only increases the engine to 225hp. Turbocharge A turbocharger acts in a similar way as a supercharger and pressurises the air at the inlet manifold. As the inlet valve in the cylinder opens, a greater mass of air is drawn into the cylinder to be burnt with the fuel. More power is generated at each engine speed. Unlike the supercharger it does not feed off the power output of the engine. The turbocharger uses the waste energy from the exhaust gas to drive a turbine wheel that is linked to the compressor through a shaft.

At high altitudes the turbocharger rotates faster to increase delivery of air to the engine to compensate. So a turbocharger maintains power from the engine and produces clean emissions.

Fitting a turbocharger and an air cooler can increase engine power even more. An Intercooler removes the heat of compression between the stages of a compressor whereas an aftercooler reduces the temperature of the air leaving the compressor. Delivering cold air means that there is more oxygen per cylinder (cold air has a higher density than warm air) thus more engine power. To conclude, the benefits of turbocharging are:

SUPERCHARGERS A supercharger is combustion engine. The greater mass flow-rate provides more oxygen to support combustion than would be available in a naturally aspirated engine, which allows more fuel to be burned and more work to be done per cycle, increasing the power output of the engine. Power for the unit can come mechanically by a belt, gear, shaft, or chain connected to the engine's crankshaft. When power comes from an exhaust gas turbine a supercharger is known as a turbosupercharger[1] typically referred to simply as a turbocharger or just turbo. Common usage restricts the term supercharger to mechanically driven units. Types of supercharger There are two main types of superchargers defined according to the method of compression: positive displacement and dynamic compressors. The former deliver a fairly constant level of pressure increase at all engine speeds (RPM), whereas the latter deliver increasing pressure with increasing engine speed. Positive displacement Positive-displacement pumps deliver a nearly fixed volume of air per revolution at all speeds (minus leakage, which is almost constant at all speeds for a given pressure, thus its importance decreases at higher speeds). The device divides the air mechanically into parcels for delivery to the engine, mechanically moving the air into the engine bit by bit. Major types of positive-displacement pumps include: Roots Lysholm twin-screw an air compressor used for forced induction of an internal

Sliding vane Scroll-type supercharger, also known as the G-Lader Compression type Positive-displacement pumps are further divided into internal compression and external compression types. Roots superchargers are typically external compression only (although high-helix roots blowers attempt to emulate the internal compression of the Lysholm screw). External compression refers to pumps that transfer air at ambient pressure into the engine. If the engine is running under boost conditions, the pressure in the intake manifold is higher than that coming from the supercharger. That causes a backflow from the engine into the supercharger until the two reach equilibrium. It is the backflow that actually compresses the incoming gas. This is a highly inefficient process, and the main factor in the lack of efficiency of Roots superchargers when used at high boost levels. The lower the boost level the smaller is this loss, and Roots blowers are very efficient at moving air at low pressure differentials, which is what they were first invented for (hence the original term "blower"). All the other types have some degree of internal compression. Internal compression refers to the compression of air within the supercharger itself, which, already at or close to boost level, can be delivered smoothly to the engine with little or no back flow. This is more effective than back flow compression and allows higher efficiency to be achieved. Internal compression devices usually use a fixed internal compression ratio. When the boost pressure is equal to the compression pressure of the supercharger, the back flow is zero. If the boost pressure exceeds that compression pressure, back flow can still occur as in a roots blower. Internal compression blowers must be matched to the expected boost pressure in order to achieve the higher efficiency they are capable of, otherwise they will suffer the same problems and low efficiency of the roots blowers. What is the difference between a turbocharger and a supercharger on a cars engine?

Let's start with the similarities. Both turbochargers and superchargers are called forced induction systems. They compress the air flowing into the engine (see How Car Engines Work for a description of airflow in a normal engine). The advantage of compressing the air is that it lets the engine stuff more air into a cylinder. More air means that more fuel can be stuffed in, too, so you get more power from each explosion in each cylinder. A turbo/supercharged engine produces more power overall than the same engine without the charging. The typical boost provided by either a turbocharger or a supercharger is 6 to 8 pounds per square inch (psi). Since normal atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi at sea level, you can see that you are getting about 50-percent more air into the engine. Therefore, you would expect to get 50-percent more power. It's not perfectly efficient, though, so you might get a 30-percent to 40-percent improvement instead. The key difference between a turbocharger and a supercharger is its power supply. Something has to supply the power to run the air compressor. In a supercharger, there is a belt that connects directly to the engine. It gets its power the same way that the water pump or alternator does. A turbocharger, on the other hand, gets its power from the exhaust stream. The exhaust runs through a turbine, which in turn spins the compressor (see How Gas Turbine Engines Work for details). There are tradeoffs in both systems. In theory, a turbocharger is more efficient because it is using the "wasted" energy in the exhaust stream for its power source. On the other hand, a turbocharger causes some amount of back pressure in the exhaust system and tends to provide less boost until the engine is running at higher RPMs. Superchargers are easier to install but tend to be more expensive.