Use of CFD for the turbocharger design

Abstract

Turbocharger is one of the approaches that utilize the exhaust gas of an automobile to drive the compression device. The purpose of turbocharging is to increase the intake pressure and the amount of air into the combustion chamber to improve the efficiency of the engine. This paper presents the investigation into the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and other computational methods for the design improvement of turbocharger in turbine-compressor assembly. Detailed description of the complete design process is described and numerous CFD predictions of the flow are presented with detailed examination of the several factors affecting the turbocharging system. Moreover, variations of important geometrical design parameters are discussed in accordance to the CFD results and the improved design of the turbine-compressor assembly in term of transient response. As the result, the comparisons are carried out between overall performance predictions and simulation results.