Superchargers
Superchargers
Supercharging is a type of Forced Induction used to increase horsepower and torque.
Why we use them.
When you hear or think about a supercharger, you are thinking about power, large burnouts, and a screaming car coming off the line. Superchargers give your car raw power and they do it quite simply. Superchargers are simply air pumps. Instead of having your engine suck the air in, a supercharger pushes it in. It pressurizes the air and rams it into your cylinders. Giving your car extra air to burn.
There are a variety of mechanisms and pumps available to force air into the cylinders, though it must do more than that to be efficient. Superchargers must be able to provide boost at a large range of rpms. They can not create to much heat or use to much of the engines power. They also have to fit with in a relatively large price range going from about $1500 to about $4000. Usually superchargers, including turbos, come in a kit with many parts, some needed to help strengthen the car and others that actually make the supercharger work.
Turbochargers are essentially another form of supercharging. Turbos are just ran off the exhaust while superchargers run of the engine through a pulley system. They also make totally different power bands. Since a turbo runs of exhaust it will increase its boost quickly while the car is pumping out more exhaust making an exponetial graph. On the other hand, a supercharger will always run at a certain distance from the rpm of the engine, making the power band linear. For instance a supercharger could have a pulley system that multiplies the rpm by 3. This means that every rpm the boost will be constant. When engines don't run well, like at a low rpm, they don't consume a lot of air. So when a supercharger is running the air gets backed up into the manifold. This creates pressure, otherwise known as boost. When an engine is running well and using a larger quantity of air there is less backup and so less boost. The end result is that turbochargers tend to add to the powerband of the engine at higher rpms, while superchargers are will totally change the powerband to reflect the characteristics of the supercharger.
Types of Superchargers
Most of the superchargers sold today are centrifugal-style superchargers, which are internal-compression superchargers, meaning they create the boost (compress the air) inside the supercharger head unit (blower) before discharging it into the engine's air intake. This type of supercharger is basically the compressor side of a turbo. External compression superchargers (roots or screw-type superchargers - Whipple) have become less popular as centrifugal superchargers have evolved. Centrifugal superchargers are more reliable, especially at higher boost levels, and are capable of creating much more boost than external compression superchargers at higher rpms. They can do this while creating a much cooler intake charge inevitably resulting in an even denser intake charge.
The Whipple Twin Screw Supercharger
Roots Blower
Centrifugal Supercharger
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