Why is it, that a turbocharger is universally is recognised as the ONLY form of forced induction that COSTS power?

Well let’s look at this shall we?
We have a decently specced engine, say an Rs2000 I4 and we are making 170bhp through our otherwise std setup with some head mods and cams.

To make this power we are utilising the air pumping ability of our 4 x 500cc cylinders.

They are drawing in enough air and fuel at the correct ratio and importantly, expelling it again to produce this power. This ability incidentally is related to its volumetric efficiency which i will touch briefly later.

The I4 is making its 170bhp with its nice, well-designed STANDARD 4-2-1 exhaust system.

Let’s now redesign it in the great Ford RsBB fashion and remove the nice exhaust system and stick a tiny pathetic straw sized .48A/R turbine housing on it with a closed wastegate and the turbocharger actually welded tight so it can’t spin.

Does ANYONE on this BB think this engine will now make 170bhp? Well It will be very lucky to make 120bhp now.

So whats happened?

WE HAVE INCREASED PUMPING LOSSES DRAMATICALLY.
This is the biggest issue. The reason this costs us power, is a great proportion of the energy produced from the power stroke of 1 cylinder burning our nicely presented charge of fuel and air is now wasted trying to push the spent gas out of the previously active cylinders exhaust valve and through the tiny turbine housing.

We now have some detrimental knock on effects:
The friction on components caused by this pumping loss now adds heat to our engine too. This heat was part of our power strokes energy.

This pumping loss has also caused the overlap events effective scavenge volume to drop massively as the nice, meticulously calculated pulsation vacuum that designers spent hundreds of hours to create has now been exchanged for BACKPRESSURE.

This backpressure has now also decreased the amount of air the exhaust pulse drew through the inlet valve at overlap when piston speed was at its lowest so maximum cylinder fill has reduced, down goes VE.. Things are looking bad for our power curve now.


So conversely, as we now have LESS airflow on overlap, we are going to start dumping heat through our exhaust seat and port and are heating our soft alloy head up.

WHY? Very simple ,
Designers use scavenging on overlap as a very simple and very effective way of cooling valve seats, guides and ports.

How? Also very simple ,
As we reach overlap in our cam timing event we have both COLD inlet and HOT exhaust valve open, this gives the exhaust valve and relative components time to be cooling from their grievous job only moments ago of shifting a mass of immensely hot air through its system so it’s a great relief to sit in some nice cold flowing air for a second and transfer a bit of excess heat away!!

Our fancy new engine / design isn’t looking too hot now is it? (Well actually, its getting damn hot.. )

So,
I hope this large and simply worded explanation helps you to understand that a turbo DEFINATELY costs power by its very presence on your engine and also why it does so?

Ok? Good!!

So what the hells that got to do with today’s BB argument? Oh yeah, sorry........

Exhaust backpressure caused by the turbine housing assembly’s restriction is our key element between T3 and T4.

But let’s deal with the delivery of our air first and we will use the good old YB for our examples.

A T4 produces far more VOLUME of air at a given pressure from its HOUSING than a T3.THATS UNIVERSALLY AGREED.

Now if we quickly use this bizarre volume of air example supplied by someone earlier...


quote:
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Foolishly, sorry, Originally Posted by erm.. someone
Look at it this (simple way so you understand ), imagine a 1 ft diameter balloon inflated to 15psi. Then imagine a 2ft ballon inflated to 15psi - are you trying to tell me that both have the sane volume of air in them?
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That balloon is actually bigger so yes it holds more volume, but this is not applicable to an engine because even if we take all the inlet valves out and pressurise the system with our turbochargers, we are still presenting each turbocharger with the same volume to fill, lets say 2000cc for the cylinders and 1000cc for the intake of the head and the plenum / hoses.

So we have a 3000cc volume to pressurise with air. This does not change unless the engine begins to operate. An engine will only generate more power by shifting more air at the correct AFR. SIMPLE.

The engine will only shift more air if we do one of the following:

1) Improve the airs route into the head.
2) Increases the pressure we push it in with.
3) Improve the mapping.
4) Improve the volumetric efficiency.

So,
We still know a T4 WILL make more power than a T3 at the same boost so why is that?

We don’t appear to have done any of the above mods do we?
The head hasn’t been ported.
We are running the same boost.
We aint touched the chip cos PHIL cant remember what spec it was for!
So have we changed the engines VE?

Good question, and back to turbo’s.
A T3 50trim with our desired pressure ratio of 2.4 (14.7psi inlet +20psi outlet divided by 14.7psi inlet) will be spinning at 134,000 rpm with a compressor efficiency of 70%.

A T4 60 trim with our desired pressure ratio of 2.4 (14.7psi inlet +20psi outlet divided by 14.7psi inlet) will be spinning at only 97,000 rpm with a compressor efficiency of 82%.

Now lets go to the turbine housing.
The T4 P trim wheel flows a lot more air than the Std T3 trim rear wheel. (They are all the same as std on T3) but it conversely takes more to spin it to speed.

We now have an exhaust backpressure IMPROVEMENT due to a better flowing rear wheel!!!!!!!

Secondly,
We now have a wastegate that will open much sooner and much wider than it would on the T3 as less exhaust volume is required to spin the turbine as we have a 37,000 rpm improvement in efficiency at our 20psi.

HEY, we have another exhaust backpressure IMPROVEMENT.

If our T4 is using a bigger housing, and it IS if compared to a T3 we have another exhaust backpressure IMPROVEMENT!!

So lets go to boost at the intake:
Now our exhaust backpressure is reduced, our cylinders demand for air has increased. We have overlap efficiency gains, we have thermal efficiency gains so we can suck more air and we can suck it with a greater pull because we are actually revving more freely so our peak piston velocity has increased.

So we are CONSUMING more air and this T4 can supply it for fun… But… we aren’t making more power because the T4 pumped more air at 20psi.

We are making more power because this turbo improved the volumetric efficiency of our engine mainly through exhaust backpressure reductions and an improvement in outlet temperatures at the compressor outlet due to Adiabatic Efficiency which we may or may not discuss later.

Goodnight folks,
If anyone wants to know what the compressor maps do and how to decipher the turbo specs, let me know when ive slept cos this essay took me four hours to write in a fashion that anyone can understand!! It would take about 15mins using techie terms

Best Regards and goodnight,
Stu
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