Abstract
As Indian OEMs are marching towards to meet the latest emission norms set by Government, the automotive industry is improving the performance of turbocharged internal combustion engines in terms of improved low-end torque, peak torque, peak power, fuel economy and reduced emissions. This, in turn, raises the demand for highly efficient turbocharging technology. The key strategy to improve turbocharger performance is to tailor the performance characteristics of the compressor. The type of turbocharger application governs the performance requirements of the compressor. Certain Indian commercial vehicle manufacturers in LCV segment especially tractor manufacturers apply low BMEP engines to have good durability and such applications require low-pressure ratio and wide flow compressors with peak efficiency island below the pressure ratio 1.3 to 1.4. A careful investigation is required to study the influence of compressor design features to design a low-pressure ratio compressor. However, the number of geometrical parameters influencing the compressor performance is high and investigating all the parameters may take a lot of time and computational effort. Furthermore, the trade-off between efficiency at low-end torque, peak torque, peak power and part-load efficiencies dictates the need for a multi-disciplinary optimization tool to design the compressor stage. The computational effort required to perform optimization through 3D CFD is also quite high. Hence, in this paper, we are introducing an approach to optimize the compressor design at multiple operating points through streamline calculations with the help of AxStream and validating the selected designs numerically through CFD and FEA calculations. This approach helps to design tailor-made compressors based on customer requirements and deliver the proto samples in a shorter period.