SCIENCE CHINA

Technological Sciences
RESEARCH PAPER
July 2010 Vol.53 No.7: 18171823 doi: 10.1007/s11431-010-4004-6

Research and development on transonic compressor of high pressure ratio turbocharger for vehicle internal combustion engines
ZHENG XinQian*, ZHANG YangJun & YANG MingYang
State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China Received October 27, 2009; accepted May 4, 2010

The pressure ratio required for a turbocharger centrifugal compressor increases with internal combustion engine power density. High pressure ratio causes a transonic flow field at the impeller inducer. Transonic flow narrows the stable flow range and deteriorates stage efficiency. In this work, an advanced high pressure ratio transonic compressor was designed. The experimental results show that the maximum pressure ratio of this turbocharger is about 4.2, the maximum efficiency is above 80% and the stable flow range at the designed rotating speed is up to 34%. A turbocharger with this transonic compressor has been applied to some vehicle research actually, and improved power density by 40%. turbocharger, internal combustion (IC) engine, compressor, high pressure ratio, transonic
Citation: Zheng X Q, Zhang Y J, Yang M Y. Research and development on transonic compressor of high pressure ratio turbocharger for vehicle internal combustion engines. Sci China Tech Sci, 2010, 53: 18171823, doi: 10.1007/s11431-010-4004-6

Introduction

Turbocharging the internal combustion (IC) engine is as old as engine itself. Most diesel engines of all types and sizes that are manufactured today are turbocharged, and the naturally aspirated diesel engines are becoming a thing of the past. Turbocharging is also increasingly applied to gasoline engines [1]. A turbocharger consists of a compressor and a turbine. The compressor is driven by the turbine extracting energy from exhaust gases. Compared to a naturally aspirated engine, the benefits of a turbocharged engine are power increasing, lower fuel consumption and emission reduction [2]. With increasingly severe environmental and energy problems faced in recent years and in the future, turbo*Corresponding author (email: zhengxq@tsinghua.edu.cn)

charging technology is more and more important. High pressure ratio turbocharging technology can upgrade the power density of diesel engine, reduce emissions, greatly improve engine economy and reduce CO2 emissions, which makes it as essential technology for achieving these evolving goals [3]. Especially the facilitation of high EGR rate and significant downsizing require cylinder charging with high pressure ratio to compensate loss of volumetric efficiency and cylinder volume, and thus peak power, respectively [4]. In addition, turbocharging with high pressure ratio is necessary for high altitude operation, especially for high altitude UAV IC engine [5]. However, high pressure ratio causes the flow in the compressor to be transonic. Complicated flow phenomena, such as shock wave-boundary layer interaction, narrow the compressors stable flow range [6, 7], and make operation in vehicle IC engines difficult. Turbocharger with high pressure ratio was developed for marine IC engines [8]. How-

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ever, the stable flow range of compressor for vehicle is much wider than that for marine. Zheng developed a transonic centrifugal compressor with pressure ratio 4.0:1 for vehicle, based of a compressor with 3.5:1 [9]. Although the pressure ratio and efficiency of this compressor were enhanced, its flow range was not widened. Figure 1 shows the performance of the compressor reported in ref. [9]. The operating line of a modern vehicle IC engine with high power density is not in the compressor map. At high pressure ratio, the operating line lies on the left side of the compressor map, which means that stable operation is impossible by compressor surge. Therefore, map width enhancement is a major issue for state-of-the-art high-pressure-ratio compressor design and development. In order to adapt the compressor to this demand, a transonic flow centrifugal compressor with wide flow range was studied and developed.

2 Full three-dimensional geometry design

A centrifugal compressor consists of three parts: impeller, diffuser and volute. Firstly, Compal module in Concepts NREC, a professional turbocharger design software, was used to optimize the one-dimensional key geometry parameters and for performance prediction. Figure 2 shows the initial characteristics after optimizing the key geometry parameters, fulfilling the design requirements. However, whether the final aerodynamic performance can reach the performance predicted by one-dimensional Compal module depends on three-dimensional geometry design, especially on the design of the impellers complex blade shape. Then Axcent module in Concepts NREC was used to design the three-dimensional geometry of impeller, based on three parts: contours design, blade angle distribution and blade thickness distribution. In the following, fundamental

Figure 1 Compressor map and engine operation characteristic (N is the designed rotating speed).

design principles are explained. Blade contour design has great influence on compressor performance. As for transonic flow centrifugal compressor, the relative Mach number of the inlet blade tip plays an important role in performance. The principle for determining the inlet blade tips radius is to minimize its relative Mach number to decrease the strength of shock wave. Due to the existence of shock wave, the inflow cannot be accelerated too much from the leading edge to the throat of the impeller. The inducer blade should be straight or even negative bending. For this design, the shroud contour slope rate from 020%M is about zero (M means meridional distance) and the slope increases at middle and end parts. In order to avoid flow separation, the curvature rate of the leading edge and trailing edge of shroud and hub contour should be as small as possible. For a transonic flow compressor, the curvature rate of shroud contour leading edge is generally taken as zero to avoid or reduce flow separation caused by shock wave. According to the Euler equation, the blade angle distribution determines the blade loading, especially the position of its peak. Blade wrap angle and blade lean angle are derived from the distribution of blade angle. For subsonic compressor with low pressure ratio, the maximum loading generally lies in at mean meridional distance. For transonic compressor, the maximum loading lies at about 60%M 80%M, which means the maximum blade angle lies in the area of 70%M80%M. The difference between the maximum and the trailing edge blade angle is about 1020. Blade stress and vibration are very important for the reliability, especially for transonic compressor. The distribution of blade thickness mainly affects the strength of the blade and has comparably small effect on aerodynamic performance, especially for subsonic compressor. For transonic compressors, the thickness at leading edge should be as thin as possible in order to reduce the flow acceleration in the inducer. Natural vibration frequency and therewith material fatigue of the impeller are determined by the taper rate distribution, which is determined by the blade thickness distribution at shroud and hub. Based on the above principles of transonic compressors design, Axcent module was used to finish the geometry design of transonic compressor (as shown in Figure 3). The main geometrical parameters are: R1t/R2=0.73; R1h/R2=0.23; B2/R2=0.12; R5/R2=1.52. R1t is the tip radius of impeller at inlet; R1h is the hub radius of impeller at inlet; R2 is the radius of impeller at exit; B2 is the width of impeller at exit; R5 is the radius of diffuser at exit. The backward angle of the impeller is 38. However, this early step is greatly affected, iteratively, by the results obtained in subsequent numerical simulation by means of fully three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In order to further extend the stable flow range of the designed transonic centrifugal compressor, self-recirculation casing treatment (SRCT) was also studied and adopted. The structural parameters of the SCRT are displayed in Figure 4.

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Figure 2 One-dimensional aerodynamical design and performance prediction.

Figure 3 Compressors full three-dimensional geometry.

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Figure 4 Geometry structure and parameters of self-recirculation casing treatment.

After detailed thorough analysis of the influences of the single parameters, the optimized geometry for this impeller is given by: Sr=11 mm, br=5 mm, hb=13 mm, bb=8 mm, Sf=15 mm, hf=10 mm. For comprehensible reasons of scope, a detailed description of the parameter variation analysis is omitted.

3 Full three-dimensional flow analysis by CFD

In the previous paragraphs, design principles of transonic compressor were discussed. The compressor geometry was determined and the structure of self-recirculation casing treatment was also confirmed. The compressor geometrys (such as meridional contour, blade angle distribution, blade thickness distribution) effects on performance may not be seen isolated, but in mutual interaction with each other. For transonic flow compressor, the aerodynamic performance is much more sensitive to the geometry. Thus, one-dimensional or quasi-three-dimensional flow analysis, as they are applied successfully to subsonic compressors, is no longer sufficient for an integrated design process. Full three-dimensional CFD as analysis tool should be employed to analyze the flow field and optimize the geometry. Actually, almost all geometric parameters above are the results of the optimized design based on previous suchlike full three-dimensional numerical flow simulation. Although it is very time expensive in calculation, a thorough analysis by simulation has to include impeller, diffuser, volute and SCRT. The used solver applies to a CFD code based on a 3D steady compressible finite volume scheme to solve the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations in conservative formulation. Central scheme was used for spatial discretization while forth-order Runge-Kutta scheme for temporal discretization. The Spalart-Allmaras 1-equation model was applied for turbulence closure [10]. Total temperature and total pressure together with the velocity direction were imposed as inlet boundary conditions; static pressure was set

as outlet boundary condition. No-slip and impermeability conditions were imposed on the solid walls. The interface between impeller and volute was modeled as frozen rotor, as angular variations of flow quantities exceeded a negligible level and are object of this research work. Thus, the rotating system was calculated in relative coordinates, yet the flow quantities were transferred locally without varying the relative positions of impeller and volute. The grid quality in the meshed SRCT is of utmost importance for the flow simulation in this work. In general, great steps in cell size induce numerical problems for CFD solvers. As for cell size, SRCT and passage mesh usually differ significantly; hence matching these two grids is a challenging issue. Figure 5 illustrates the topology of a promising approach for the tip clearance grid, which was used in this work. The clearance mesh attached to the passage is divided into 3 levels. The first level grid matches with the blade tip; the second level grid covers the whole passage and has a smaller size than that of the passage and the first level; the third level grid is divided into 3 blocks, of which the middle block matches with the SRCT grid in cell size. All the tip clearance grid blocks rotate except the middle block in the third level. The frozen rotor approach is employed to model the interfaces between rotor and stator blocks. The other interfaces are set as full non-matching boundary conditions. The whole grid consists of 9312021 cells. The grid number of the volute is 414495, of the SRCT 1528308, and the impeller mesh is as large as 7369218 cells. The whole grid and its single domains are shown in Figure 6. Numerical simulation takes about 45 days to calculate for high or design mass flow, respectively, and about 78 days for operation points near surge. Because compressor stall or surge is a strongly unsteady process, the steady simulation is not suitable to predict the initiation point of the stall precisely. But it has often been employed to predict the compressor performance map because of the promising CPU time requirements. Generally, the point where the steady simulation begins to blow up is considered to be the stall point. The unsatisfying inlet boundary condition caused by the recirculation flow at the inlet is the main reason for the numerical stall. As a result, the predicted stall point should be closely related to the inlet

Figure 5 Sketch of meshing approach for tip clearance.

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Figure 7 Flow field structure of centrifugal compressor, enlarged view of relative Mach number and vectors of relative velocity.

Figure 6 Grid for numerical simulation.

grid domain, which makes the stall initiation prediction casual. However, it is reasonable to compare the stall points by steady simulation among different kinds of compressor with the same inlet domain as well as the other boundaries. In the present analysis, the blowing-up point was considered to be the stall point, as usually. Detailed optimization process cannot be discussed here as it would go beyond the scope of this paper. Just the final, optimized flow field structure of compressor is given in Figure 7. The velocity vectors show that there is no remarkable flow separation in the flow field in this condition. The performance results by CFD are shown in Figure 8. After finishing the aerodynamic design, impeller stress was analyzed by ANSYS . Considering the models cycle symmetric properties, one sector was taken as the object of calculation. It was divided into 25376 units and 42222 nodes; the cell type solid95 unit with central node, which is commonly used in ANSYS . Figure 9 shows the equivalent stress distribution of impeller. The maximum equivalent stress is about 354 MPa, which lies in the center of the rear disk. The impeller raw material is wrought aluminum alloy whose yield stress is 375 MPa and stress limit is 410 MPa. Therefore, it satisfies the stress requirement.

4 Experimental research
Subsequently, after finishing the aerodynamic design of this compressor, the next steps are engineering design, test parts processing, prototype manufacturing and verification tests. The photo of the turbocharger is shown in Figure 10.

Figure 8 Compressor performance from CFD simulation.

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Figure 11 Advanced turbocharger test bench. Figure 9 Stress analysis result of compressor impellor.

Figure 10 Photo of high pressure ratio compressor and turbocharger.

Figure 11 is a photo of the automatic turbocharger test bench, including the control unit, the combustion chamber fuel supply, a manual test backup system and other subsystems. This test bench can carry out stability performance test in various flow ranges with medium, high and super-high pressure ratios. Thermocouple probes were used to measure the temperature with tolerance of 1%; electronic scanned pressure capsules were used to measure the pressure (0.2%). The volume flow was measured by vortex flowmeter (1.0%) downstream of the compressor, and the rotational speed was measured by non-contact electromagnetic transducer (0.5%). The experimental results are shown in Figure 12. In centrifugal compressor design, stable flow range and efficiency are rivaling objectives. To judge the operational flexibility of a compressor unit, a non-dimensional parameter is defined as: (mchokemsurge)/mchoke. At the designed rotating speed N, this stable flow range is improved by 13% from 21% to 34%. In addition, in the presented case the maximum efficiency for this compressor is still beyond 80%. Therefore, this design offers a remarkably good trade-off of favorable efficiency and wide operation range.

Figure 12 Experimental performance comparison and operation characteristic with IC engine.

Figure 12 also shows the engine operational characteristic. For the original turbocharger, this line lies to the left of the surge limit at pressure ratios above 2.5, which means the turbocharger is driven into surge and the whole system cannot work properly, indeed it can even be damaged. When the newly designed compressor is used, it can be seen that the stable flow range of compressor in high pressure ratio is effectively widened and the operating line is within the right side of surge line throughout the compressor map. There is no surge in the turbocharger and it meets the wide flow range requirement of transonic centrifugal compressor for vehicle engine. This turbocharger has been successfully applied to several high power density engines for vehicles.

Conclusion

In this work, the development process of a state-of-the-art transonic turbocharger compressor with high pressure ratio,

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adapted to wide flow range requirements of charging a vehicle internal combustion engine, was outlined thoroughly from initial one-dimensional computer-aided design parameter analysis to prototype manufacturing and testing. The experimental results demonstrate that the process was successful as a peak maximum pressure ratio of about 4.2, maximum efficiency higher than 80%. Stable flow range extension by up to 34% was reached at the designed speed. The achieved parameters meet the highest requirements for todays turbocharger technology for facilitating high rates of EGR and significant downsizing with design feasible to be cost-efficiently manufactured in high lot sizes. This turbocharger with high pressure ratio has therefore been applied to some vehicle research actually, and improved the power density by 40%.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50806040) and Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education) (Grant No. 200800031075). This work was also supported by the fund from National Key Laboratory of Diesel Engine Turbocharging Technology. 1 Baines N C. Fundamentals of Turbochargers. Boston: Concepts ETI, Inc, 2005

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