Fundamentals of Turbocharging

Book excerpt: Turbocharging is used more widely than ever in internal combustion engines. Most diesel engines are increasingly so. Turbocharger technology and often commercial turbocharger components are being applied in many other fields including fuel cells, miniature gas turbine engines, and air cycle refrigerators. This book is the first comprehensive treatment of turbochargers and turbocharging to be made widely available in the last twenty years. It is intended to serve as both an introduction to the turbocharger itself, and to the problems of matching a turbocharger with an internal combustion engine. The turbocharger is a highly sophisticated device, which has been described as aerospace gas turbine engineering allied to mass production techniques. Undoubtedly the key to commercial success lies in achieving the correct compromise between performance, life, cost, and this runs as a continuous thread the book. The operation of turbomachines is fundamentally different from that of reciprocating machines, so that the turbocharged engine has many complex characteristics, not all of them desirable. The means by which the advantageous characteristics are exploited to the full, and the technology required to overcome disadvantageous, are fully explained. [Source : d'après la 4e de couverture].