Exhaust System with Turbocharger and Supercharger

1.0 Turbocharger

To get more power for an engine you need to burn more fuel and it must be
quick. Getting more fuel is easy but unless there is also more air, that extra fuel is
useless. A cylinder is limited in how much air it can breath by its size or
displacement. Historically, when engine makers wanted more air to mix with their
fuel, they need a bigger cylinder. There was no replacement for displacement. This
make engine larger, heavier and often times slower to rev. Then in 1905, a Swiss
engineer named Alfred Buchi, came up with a replacement for displacement. When he
used the exhaust gas of an engine to power a compressor that then fed denser air into
the combustion chamber. More air meant more fuel can burn creating more engine
power and thrust.

Turbo were quickly adopted by the aeronautical industry because it can be added
externally to an existing engine. When you are almost 20,000 feet up, the air is almost
half as dense and engine would lose as much as half of their power. The airplane
horsepower above the critical altitude are lower than below it. A turbo restored air
pressure in the engine back to sea level pressure. This is called turbo normalizing.
When a turbo is use to exceed that pressure, it is called turbo charging.

As the named suggest, a turbocharger is driven by a turbine that is connected to

the engine exhaust. The turbine in turn drives the compressor, forcing more air into
the engines combustion chamber and achieving a higher power output.

Image 1: Turbocharger

The main function of the turbocharger is to deliver compressed air from the
surrounding into the intake manifold to increase the air to fuel ratio. The engine
can perform at maximum degree to increase the power. Another reason of
installing this part is to help the engine deliver more power at higher altitude due
to the fact that the density of air keep decreasing at higher altitude. This is
because less air compile on top of each other.

Although this device manage to solve the altitude problem in airplane

performance, it takes some time for the engine to create enough exhaust pressure
to spin the turbo and pump compressed intake air into the engine and is longest
when the engine is in a low-rpm or while changing gear. This can be refer to as
turbo lag.
The lag in turbo can be reduce by a lot of factor. One of the ways is to
replace your turbo exhaust downpipe with a smaller-diameter unit. A downpipe
with a smaller inner diameter offers less airflow, slightly reducing top-end
horsepower. However, the smaller pipe diameter increases the speed of exhaust
flow, thus allowing your turbocharger to spool faster, increasing response and
low-end power.
2.0 Supercharger

Supercharger are mechanically driven by belts that are driven by the engine. It is
a dynamic compressor where air get accelerated to high speed and then gets slowed
down to increase the pressure. Air draws into the impeller and centrifugal force flings
in out in a compressor housing where the speed gets compressed in a high pressure
instead. A supercharger compresses the air back to sea-level-equivalent pressures or
even much higher in order to make the engine produce just as much power at cruise
altitude as it does at sea level. With the reduced aerodynamic drag at high altitude and
the engine still producing rated power a supercharged airplane can fly much faster at
altitude than a naturally aspirated one.

Image 2: Supercharger

The pilot controls the output of the supercharger with the throttle and indirectly
via the propeller governor control. Since the size of the supercharger is chosen to
produce a given amount of pressure at high altitude, the supercharger is oversized for
low altitude. The pilot must be careful with the throttle and watch the manifold
pressure gauge to avoid over-boosting at low altitude. As the aircraft climbs and the
air density drops, the pilot must continuously open the throttle in small increments to
maintain full power. The altitude at which the throttle reaches full open and the
engine is still producing full rated power is known as the critical altitude. Above the
critical altitude, engine power output will start to drop as the aircraft continues to
climb.
As discussed above, supercharging can cause a spike in temperature, and extreme
temperatures will cause detonation of the fuel-air mixture and damage to the engine.
In the case of aircraft, this causes a problem at low altitudes, where the air is both
denser and warmer than at high altitudes. With high ambient air temperatures,
detonation could start to occur with the manifold pressure gauge reading far below the
red line.
A supercharger optimized for high altitudes causes the opposite problem on the
intake side of the system. With the throttle retarded to avoid over-boosting, air
temperature in the carburetor can drop low enough to cause ice to form at the throttle
plate. In this manner, enough ice could accumulate to cause engine failure, even with
the engine operating at full rated power. For this reason, many supercharged aircraft
featured a carburetor air temperature gauge or warning light to alert the pilot of
possible icing conditions.
Several solutions to these problems were developed such as intercoolers and after
coolers, anti-detonant injection, two-speed superchargers, and two-stage
superchargers.

1. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/systems/whats-the-difference-
turbocharger-vs-supercharger/
2. https://itstillruns.com/reduce-turbo-lag-7880011.html
3. https://www.mechlectures.com/function-supercharger-turbocharger-automobiles/