Many consumers want a turbocharged model when they buy a car, after all, a car with a "T" is better in terms of power performance than a model with a naturally aspirated engine. However, for enhancing the power output of the engine, another technology brings better results than turbocharging, which is supercharging, and this article will explore it in detail.

First, we need to figure out what supercharging and turbocharging are.

Supercharging is the mechanical way to increase the air pressure of the engine intake manifold, thereby increasing the engine output power. Its working principle is equivalent to a blower, and through the crankshaft of the engine to drive the belt or chain, turn the turbocharger internal blade output more air, when the engine absorbs the air, it will spray more gasoline, improve the power performance.

At present, there are mainly three types of mechanical supercharging: centrifugal, Lu, and spiral.

The turbocharger is the use of exhaust gas from the engine to drive the turbine, and it needs to wait until the engine speed rises to a certain degree before it starts to work. Its working form is like you are holding an electric fan to blow inside the cylinder, forcing the wind to fill the inside of the cylinder, so that the air inside increases to enhance the combustion efficiency.

What are the advantages of supercharging?

The supercharger is directly driven by the engine crankshaft, that is, the supercharger works in sync with the engine, without the turbo hysteresis that turbocharged engines generally have, the power output is as linear as the naturally aspirated engine, and the performance is stronger than the self-aspirating engine.

At the same time, because the supercharger works synchronously with the engine, it can play a supercharging effect when the engine has low torque output, and the power response is quite fast when the torque is low, and there will be no feeling of "low turn weakness" of the turbocharger.

More importantly, because the mechanical supercharger does not need to be connected to the lubrication system of the engine, the working ambient temperature is only 70-100 ° C, and the turbocharger is 400-900 ° C, the requirements of the mechanical supercharger on the lubrication system and cooling system are much lower than that of the turbocharger. There will be no abnormal lubrication system of turbocharged models resulting in excessive burning oil and temperature failures. On the whole, supercharging is more practical than turbocharging.

So the question is, the utility of supercharging is so high, why is it not popular?

Everything has two sides, supercharging in some ways is top, but it also has unbearable hard damage. First of all, in the interests of consumers, because the supercharger has been working, the engine will always spray more gasoline, and the fuel consumption will be greatly increased. At the same time, the precision of the mechanical supercharger is higher than that of the turbocharger, and the volume is larger, so its manufacturing cost is higher, and the price of the vehicle and the maintenance cost in the later period will also be increased.

Secondly, the mechanical supercharger depends on the engine to drive, which means that it will consume part of the power of the engine while enhancing the power. Therefore, if the small displacement engine is equipped with a mechanical supercharger, then the power increase is not obvious.

The last is the noise of the engine, although the running smoothness of the mechanical supercharger is better than that of the turbocharger, the noise of its work is much greater than that of the turbocharger, and the driving comfort is poor.

In summary, although the advantages of the mechanical supercharger are obvious, many consumers find it difficult to accept the hard injury, so does this mean that the mechanical supercharger is useless?

The answer is no. Due to the advantages of mechanical superchargers and turbochargers, many manufacturers have integrated them into one, and the birth of dual supercharger engines. This engine can be turbocharged in the low speed range without turbine hysteresis, and enable turbocharging at high speed to solve the shortcomings of turbocharging at high speed and fuel consumption. In this regard, the EA111 dual-supercharged engine carried by Volkswagen Cyrcco is a good example, although its displacement is only 1.4T, but the power performance is enough to match the 1.8T turbocharged engine of many brands. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty and high cost of dual supercharger technology, this technology is currently only mastered by a few car companies, and only applied to a few luxury models, such as Porsche Cayenne GTS, Lincoln Navigator, and other luxury brand models. This is the reason why supercharging has not been popularized in every segment of the car.

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