New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

ok guys, i was at school and the some of the steam turbines run on magnetic bearings. now a magnetic bearings is basically magnets that float the axial shaft. the advantages to this is it is frictionless, oil less, and the effiency is huge.

now if someone could make a turbo casing that used these magnetic bearings the lag time could be reduced i think as much as like 100-300%

i think this is worth investigating, i dont know of any turbo companies experimenting with this because its pretty new technology.

what do you guys think of my idea?

heres a link to a company that manufactures these bearings.

http://www.revolve.com/Products/Actu...rssensors.html

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

What about the heat though?

"Operating temperature To 250C "

482 degrees... thats pushing it for internals of a turbo

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

a pipe would be taken from the outlet on the cold side and ran through the bearing section.

aspirated air.


also the bearings on a normal turbo contribute to alot of heat onto the cold side.. if the exhaust housing had a high heat gasket material to prevent heat transfer that could also help.

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

who ever makes a product like that is going to be ------- rich

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

if a turbo like this is produced, how many people here could afford it? i know i probably couldn't

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

who the hell on here has an aftermarket turbo anyways

rofl

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

Not a bad idea. Think of the shaft of the turbo as an electron: floating in space due to polar forces. If there was a way to make the magnetics strong enough to hold the shaft in place, but allow it to spool, or even use the magnetics to help it start to spool, the efficiency would be very high. The shaft would essentially be frictionless.

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

Oh ----, my buddy is going to be pissed. He has had this idea for years. Back when I lived with him he would wake up in the middle of the night and drive to the shop to ---- with it because he thought up something. I'm not even bullshitting. He is going to flip out. He had a few "projects" working. You should have seen the mess he had going with busted ass magnets and ----. :o
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Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

Controlling magnets it that way is certainly beyond HMT, but the idea is cool as hell. Just look at Mag-lev systems for another example, those trains do like 200 km/h plus easy, and are super smooth doing it. Essentially with some sophistication you could have coils on the turbine shaft and actually start the spool up electronically, and then once the engine gets going, you could reverse the effect and take the power generated from the electrical system in the turbo to store for the next needed spool up. That'd be phat, but again, way beyond HMT.

Jung

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

Since we are discussing turbo charger technologies I thought i would share something I read a while back on SCC.

They called it the hydra charger. More or less same as a normal turbo but instead of exhaust gas turnin the wheel it used hydraulic fluid from a pump off the accessory belt. sounds like a good idea.. instant boost like a SC but w/ turbo CFM/psi... any thoughts guys?

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

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.

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

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.

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

Yes, yes you are. ;)

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

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

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

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

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.

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

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

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

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.

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

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.

Re:New idea: Magnetic turbo bearings!
 

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.