Turbochargers are widely regarded as one of the most promising enabling technology for engine downsizing, in the aim to achieve better specific fuel consumption, thermal efficiency and most importantly carbon reduction. The increasing demand for higher quality engine-turbocharger matching, leads to the development of computational models capable of predicting the unsteady behaviour of a turbocharger turbine when subjected to pulsating inlet flow. Due to the wide range of engine loads and speed variations, an automotive turbocharger turbine model must be able to render all the frequency range of a typical exhaust pulse flow. A purely one-dimensional (1-D) turbine model is capable of good unsteady swallowing capacity prediction, provided it is accurately validated. However, the unsteady turbine power evaluation still heavily relies on the quasi-steady assumption. On the other hand, meanline model is capable of resolving the turbine work output but it is limited to steady state flow due to its zero dimensional nature.
This paper explores an alternative methodology to realize turbine unsteady power prediction in 1-D by integrating these two independent modelling methods. A single entry mixed-flow turbine is first modelled using 1-D gas dynamic method to solve the unsteady flow propagation in turbine volute while the instantaneous turbine power is subsequently evaluated using a mean-line model. The key in the effectiveness of this methodology relies on the synchronization of the flow information with different time-scales. In addition to the turbine performance parameters, the common level of unsteadiness was also compared based on the Strouhal number evaluations. Comparison of the quasi-steady assumption using the experiment results was made in order to further understand the strength and weaknesses of corresponding method in unsteady turbine performance prediction. The outcomes of the simulation showed a good agreement in the shape and trend profile for the instantaneous turbine power. Meanwhile the predicted cycle-averaged value indicates a positive potential of the current turbine model to be expanded to a whole engine simulation after few minor improvements.
Numerical simulation of turbulence flow in a Kaplan turbine -Evaluation on turbine performance prediction accuracy-
