An investigation of volute cross-sectional shape on turbocharger turbine under pulsating conditions in internal combustion engine

Abstract

a b s t r a c tEngine downsizing is a proven method for CO 2 reduction in Internal Combustion Engine (ICE). A turbocharger, which reclaims the energy from the exhaust gas to boost the intake air, can effectively improve the power density of the engine thus is one of the key enablers to achieve the engine downsizing. Acknowledging its importance, many research efforts have gone into improving a turbocharger performance, which includes turbine volute. The cross-section design of a turbine volute in a turbocharger is usually a compromise between the engine level packaging and desired performance. Thus, it is beneficial to evaluate the effects of cross-sectional shape on a turbine performance. This paper presents experimental and computational investigation of the influence of volute cross-sectional shape on the performance of a radial turbocharger turbine under pulsating conditions. The cross-sectional shape of the baseline volute (denoted as Volute B) was optimized (Volute A) while the annulus distribution of area-to-radius ratio (A/R) for the two volute configurations are kept the same. Experimental results show that the turbine with the optimized volute A has better cycle averaged efficiency under pulsating flow conditions, for different loadings and frequencies. The advantage of performance is influenced by the operational conditions. After the experiment, a validated unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling was employed to investigate the mechanism by which performance differs between the baseline volute and the optimized version. Computational results show a stronger flow distortion in spanwise direction at the rotor inlet with the baseline volute. Furthermore, compared with the optimized volute, the flow distortion is more sensitive to the pulsating flow conditions in the baseline volute. This is due to the different secondary flow pattern in the cross-sections, hence demonstrating a direction for desired volute cross-sectional shape to be used in a turbocharger radial turbine for internal combustion engine.

Unsteady Flow Loss Mechanism and Aerodynamic Improvement of Two-Stage Turbine under Pulsating Conditions

“…In such a way, the flows in other passages were assumed to be the same as the calculated passage in one stage. This is a generally used method to reduce the requirement for the computational resources [32,33]. The mixing plane method was adopted at the three rotor/stator interfaces.…”

The Impact of Volute Aspect Ratio on the Performance of a Mixed Flow Turbine

“…The effect of volute cross sectional shape was studied by Yang et al [9]. Two asymmetrical housings of different aspect ratios were studied.…”

Coating Characterizations and Evaluation of Ceramic Metal Mixture Slurry Based Thermal Barrier Coating for Automotive Turbocharger Turbine Application

“…In turbocharger system, the most crucial component of is the turbine. Turbocharger turbine is important as it recovers the exhaust gases from the combustion chamber and convert it to kinetic energy for charging (Laengler et al, 2011;Yang et al, 2015). For decades, ceramic materials have been an excellent Thermal Barrier Coating (TBC) in automotive industry.…”

“…The waste heat extracted from the IC engine will expand in the turbine then, driving the compressor to compress ambient air into the combustion chamber. This process of heat recovery will boost the intake air which in turns improve the power density of the engine (Yang et al, 2015). It is the key enabler to a highly downsized engine technology for spark ignition and compressor ignition engine as it increases the specific power output and reducing the cylinder volume and weight of the IC engine (Sharma, 2015;Galindo et al, 2013;Saidur et al, 2012).…”