On the Design and Matching of Turbocharger Single Scroll Turbines for Pass Car Gasoline Engines

Abstract

With emission legislation becoming more stringent within the next years, almost all future internal combustion gasoline engines need to reduce specific fuel consumption, most of them by using turbochargers. Additionally, car manufactures attach high importance to a good drivability, which usually is being quantified as a target torque already available at low engine speeds—reached in transient response operation as fast as possible. These engine requirements result in a challenging turbocharger compressor and turbine design task, since for both not one single operating point needs to be aerodynamically optimized but the components have to provide for the optimum overall compromise for maximum thermodynamic performance. The component design targets are closely related and actually controlled by the matching procedure that fits turbine and compressor to the engine. Inaccuracies in matching a turbine to the engine full load are largely due to the pulsating engine flow characteristic and arise from the necessity of arbitrary turbine map extrapolation toward low turbine blade speed ratios and the deficient estimation of turbine efficiency for low engine speed operating points. This paper addresses the above described standard problems, presenting a methodology that covers almost all aspects of thermodynamic turbine design based on a comparison of radial and mixed-flow turbines. Wheel geometry definition with respect to contrary design objectives is done using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), finite element analysis (FEA), and optimization software. Parametrical turbine models, composed of wheel, volute, and standard piping allow for fast map calculation similar to steady hot gas tests but covering the complete range of engine pulsating mass flow. These extended turbine maps are then used for a particular assessment of turbine power output under unsteady flow admission resulting in an improved steady-state matching quality. Additionally, the effect of various design parameters like either volute sizing or the choice of compressor to turbine diameter ratio on turbine blade speed ratio operating range as well as well as turbine inertia effect is analyzed. Finally, this method enables the designer to comparatively evaluate the ability of a turbine design to accelerate the turbocharger speed for transient engine response while still offering a map characteristic that keeps fuel consumption low at all engine speeds.