Friday, November 7, 2008

Glossary of Automobile terms Part 6




TurboChargers
and
Supercharges


What the hell is the difference?

1st we must understand

What do they do? and Why?

Why?

A car needs air and fuel to make the engine spin. (remember 1 spin = push bang blow suck)
For every 2 unit of petrol, you need 25 unit of Oxygen.
Therefore, for every 2 million unit of petrol you need 25 million unit of Oxygen.

However, this world is not perfect. So for every 2 million unit of Petrol, you only get about 20 Million of Oxygen. Thats not enough. So you dont get much power.

To get more power, we need more fuel. Therefore, more fuel means we need more Oxygen.
A Supercharger is able to collect ALOT of air (Oxygen) and push it into the engine.
Therefore a supercharger is able to increase the power of your engine. (of course that means you can go faster la)

Basically:

A charger :
collects something and releases it so it can become useful.
Eg. Electric charger takes in electricity from your wall socket, and releases it into your phone battery.
Rhinocharger, a rhinoceros from africa running at you and will kill if you dont avoid it.

so a turbocharger or supercharger takes in air from the surrounding atmostphere, collects it, and pushes it into your engine.

A simple example

If you are running very fast, you will soon feel like you dont have enough air to breath, thats because your lungs can only grab as much air as the lungs can hold. But if you put some kind of pump, it will push that air (ALOT OF AIR) into your lungs and force it in (ngehehehehe). (of course you will need that pump to pull out your carbon dioxide too otherwise you will die of asyphixiation.
(But in the real world pumps are heavy and will weigh you down, so how will you run fast in the 1st place? -_______-)

So now you know what turbochargers and superchargers can do. Lets see HOW they do it.
Superchargers.
An engine has what are called Pulleys. These pulleys make sure ALL the shafts, cams, timing belts, alternator, air con compressor all turn at the same time. (A pulley is a type of wheel attached to a belt)
A crank pulley (CP) is a pulley that turns according to the engine speed. If engine is moving at 2000 rpm, the pulley turns at 2000 rpm.
A supercharger also has a belt that will connect to this pulley. And so, as that pulley turns, the supercharger pulley (SC) turns.
The SC will then move a few gears inside the Supercharger and this creates a motion that will pull in air from the atmosphere. It will pull it at very high pressure. This air will then be pushed into the engine.

Turbocharges
Almost the same, except, a turbocharger uses gas to turn the TURBINE inside the charger. (Turbine , so thats why its called Turbo, like your aeroplane is a turbojet, it uses turbines)
Where does it get the gas from?
AHA!
The gas that comes out from your engine is called Carbon Dioxide, CO2. This CO2 comes out at very very high speed. Therefore, with that speed, it can pass the turbine causing the turbine to spin. (THE CO2 GAS DOES NOT GO INTO THE ENGINE AGAIN)
The turbine spins causing air from outside to be sucked in and this will be charged at high pressure, then it will be pushed into the engine.

Will continue later about turbochargers and superchargers.

See the shiny silver thing, thats a supercharger.
See the siput (snail) looking thing, thats a turbocharger)






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