Superchargers
Homepage Aspiration Superchargers Turbochargers Uses Bibliography
| To the right shows a picture of a powerful
supercharger. Superchargers are a very good way to
create more power in a car's engine; however, there are
a few key aspects that define a supercharger. Firstly, a
supercharger uses the vehicles crankshaft for its
energy, meaning that it depends solely on the engines
power to create boost. Secondly, a supercharger is
connected to the engine through a belt which means that
it creates a constant power loss from the engine trying
to spin the belt to power the supercharger. This sounds
bad but the power loss is easily overcome by the boost
of the supercharger. Lastly, superchargers don't have a
waste-gate and spin at a very high RPM (~50,000) due to
the belt being directly connected to it and the engine
thus creating a lot of boost. |
 |
| There are two different types of
superchargers, the first being a centrifugal supercharger
and the second being a positive displacement supercharger.
Both of them carry out the same characteristics of what
defines a supercharger but in a different manner to
compress the air. The centrifugal supercharger which
looks much like a turbocharger, creates boost differently
than the positive displacement supercharger in the sense
that it has a compressor impeller which acts like a
reversed fan and sucks the air in using v-belts or chain
belts which connects to a couple gears to the crankshaft.
It is useful in the sense that it is small enough does not
need an inter-cooler for fast bikes. The positive
displacement supercharger is different in the sense that
it uses two rotors. These rotors spin creating lots of
momentum and without touching each other it causes the air
to be pressurized causing more torque at any rpm
since it is belt driven. |
 |