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Many automotive turbochargers operate in the self-excited unstable region. In the past these instabilities have been accepted as unavoidable, but recent developments in analysis and instrumentation may make it possible to reduce or eliminate them. A test stand being developed at Virginia Tech has been used to measure the vibrations of a 3.9 liter diesel engine stock turbocharger with floating bushing journal bearings. Vibration spectrum content clearly identifies the shaft instabilities and provides the basis for additional evaluation of future bearing design modifications. This paper provides additional experimental vibration data reduction that will be useful for future research direction to fully understand the turbocharger dynamic instability.

Automotive turbochargers are known to have operation into the self-excited unstable vibration region. In the past these instabilities have been accepted as unavoidable, but recent developments in analysis and instrumentation may make it possible to reduce or eliminate them. A test stand has been developed at Virginia Tech to measure the vibrations of a 3.9 liter diesel engine stock turbocharger with both stock floating bushing journal bearings and also custom design fixed geometry bearings. Vibration spectrum content clearly identifies the shaft instabilities and provides the basis for additional evaluation of current and future improved bearing design modifications. The current results, for a series of custom fixed geometry journal bearings, show a shift in the frequencies of the two unstable modes for the no load operating condition. These results can be compared to the linear analysis predicted instability frequencies to better understand the actual response of the high speed turbocharger. This paper documents the spectrum content for three different bearing designs and compares the results to a stock floating bush journal bearing result for the same no load operating condition.

The aim of this study is to analytically design flexible damped bearing-supports in order to improve the dynamic characteristics of the rotor-bearing system. The finite-element model of the turbocharger rotor with linearized bearing dynamic coefficients is used to solve for the logarithmic decrements and hence the stability map. The design process attempts to find the optimum dynamic characteristics of the flexible damped bearing-support that would give best dynamic stability of the rotor-bearing system. The method is successful in greatly improving the dynamic stability of the turbocharger and may also lead to a total linear stability throughout the entire speed range when used besides the enhanced-performance hydrodynamic bearings.