jung4g

Ok, as to the hydrolic fluid method, I've got some friends that worked for Ford (yeah I know) indirectly by working on Hydrolic energy storage for big trucks. Essentially, they use the energy from braking to build pressure in large hydro canisters and then release that energy for accelleration. This brought their city mileage up to over 30mpg for delivery trucks. Highway driving stays normal. The system is an awesome idea due to the instant torque of the energy source, but the 300-400 lbs of the system restricts it's uses. But technically as smaller version with an auxilary compressor could be used to spin a hydrolic driven turbo, so when you brake you're storing energy and they you can launch with instant boost.

Special FX

Yeah, magnets would work fine for things like stationary steam turibnes and trains on relative smooth tracks, but what about engine vibration and potholes and all kinds of other ways your turbo gets the ---- shook out of it. I think it might be a problem, but definitely one that could be dealt with. I think that producing a field with enough strength would require somewhat more current than you would win back in horsepower. Maybe a marriage of oil lube and maglev- use a super thin oil but use magnets to suspend the shaft when it's not spinning fast enough to produce a hydro-wedge with the thin oil? The magnets could remain without detrimental effects even after the shaft got to higher RPM, only it would be able to rely entirely on light oil lube. Response would be incredible but without a reliability tradeoff. Maybe add this to an Aerocharger because they already have self-contained oiling and super quick spool up. ----, I am boring.

imadouche

Yes, yes you are.

I was lost after "Magnets would work fine" but i guess im slow

shortyz

good post! i mean this would be far off in the future but just something to think about..

rsmith2786

Rare earth magnets can be extremely powerful yet very expenisve. I think they would be perfect for the job. We have one at school that is so powerful it cant be removed even by sliding it off the side of the piece of steel. Just a thought.

toalan

seems like a good idea at first but the previous response about engine vibration is very true. the amount of space in between the the bearing and the shaft would probally be too small (relative to the amount of "bobbling" a car goes thourgh) to compensate for. Of course you could through in some computing horsepower and some hardcore control algorithims to compensate for the bumps. But a turbo really has no stable operating point, like a generator turbine and a mag-lev train. If you look at a generator or the train, they slowly accelerate to a stable operating point and then stay there. To much rotational acceleration will just ---- things up. Unless you are planning never to shift, accelerate hard or brake hard then forget about it. I mean what the other guy said of oil and magnetics is interesting but you are kinda taking away from the advantage of using magents when you have to contend with oil viscosity. This is an interesting issue, in theory everything would work fine but in real life it would just mean another blown turbo. just my $.02

Johnyquest

Rotational accelaration isn't the problem here (since it's balanced and not driven from only one side). The real problem here is the THRUST control. A turbo is in essence a jet engine, as is seen by all the homade jet engines from turbo chargers. The problem is, the turbo's cold side inlet wants the move the whole deal forward, and the hot side wants to push it in the same direction. With out "physical" thrust bearings to hold the shaft in place, it want's to "propel" itself sideways everytime it spools up. A magnetic system would be great if it didn't, but somthing rather complex would have to be thought up to deal with the sudden and inconsistent thrust that the charger wheels would produce when spool[ing]ed up.

bambooseven

If you used an elctro magnet rather then a solid state magnet for the thrst bearing you could have it RPM (turbo RPM) controlled via change in the input from the power source to the magnet (thus varying the strength of the magnet and therby accounting for different amounts of thrust prduced by the impeller effect.

toalan

rotational acceleration is not ia problem if the turbine is perfectly symetric but if there is any asymetry at all it will basically ---- it up. Add heat and metal expansion into the picture and your pretty much guarantee an asymetic distribution of wieght. A turbo can go form 0 rmp to like 60k rpm in like 2 seconds, the acceleration is insane.