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Compound charging, by Edward Ralph of Fusion Motorsport.

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Preface

This article has been written on to help those wising to understand more about how the benefits of a
supercharger and turbo charger can be combined into one system. The apparent myths and general lack of
understanding yet keen interest I have come across over the last few years has led me to believe that spending
some time in order to help those wishing to explore development in this area could benefit from some actual
facts, practical experience and advice when trying to approach a system of their own.

This article will not be enough to teach you about turbos and superchargers alone. The field of forced induction
is vast and full of opinions, myths and little fact with many people tuning for top end power whilst sacrificing vital
midrange torque in order to impress others on the dyno. You should throw all this aside and read into the finer
details of forced induction. As a starting point I would recommend at least to read a few books on the subject
such as “Forced Induction Performance Tuning” by A. Graham Bell.

Introduction to compound charging

Compound, dual or twin charging as some like to call it, is not new. As much as WV with their new Golf TSI
would like you to think. It is universally accepted by those in the know that Lancia were the first to give this a
serious go with their stunning Lancia Delta S4 in 1985 which then made its début in the Monte Carlo Rallye in
January 1987. Until now the only other production car to feature this arrangement was the Nissan March
Superturbo, and that is the one I shall be concentrating my system analysis on here. Both systems are in fact
surprisingly similar, and again I shall elaborate more on this in further chapters.

So what is compound charging, and why would you want to do this? Compound charging is the application of
both a supercharger and a turbocharger in a staged system whereby the supercharger supplies the low and mid
range torque and the turbocharger provides the upper midrange and top end torque. In a perfect world you
would not notice the transition between the two and the ways to achieve this is what much of this article will be
about. Notice I have not used the word power. Power comes as a result of torque, but I feel tuning for a broad
range of torque is more accurate than tuning for a wide range of power. The power will just follow.

So, there are many reasons why you would want do this. Ultimately it comes down to engine response and the
ability to create a very broad and useful range of power, virtually from idle! There is no point having all your
power right at the top 1500-2000rpm before the rev limiter, where when you change down a gear you fall out of
this power band or when changing up to try and keep in this band of power you risk over revving the engine if
you get it wrong. This is a lot more common on big power turbo cars than their owners would like to admit. I
have driven many cars where full boost does not arrive until 5000 rpm to then hit the limiter at 7500. That's a
power band of only 2500 rpm, which power usually falls of very sharply beneath this, what you are then left with
is a torque hole at the lower mid rpm ranges of around 2500-5000 rpm which although feels fun when the turbo
starts to spool doesn't do anything positive to the balance or handling of the car. Its fine for the drag strip, but in
extreme cases this kind of response feels terribly lethargic and is very hard work to drive a twisty track fast. You
will be making many many more gear changes than someone who has a useful broad range of power and is
why typically bhp for bhp normally aspirated cars tend to be significantly faster than their turbo counterparts.

So this brings us to the supercharger. The supercharger comes in several different types, but there is only one
type that is suited to an application such as this known as the positive displacement supercharger. There are
several variations of this type of supercharger. The roots, twisted vane and the screw type, but they all operate
on similar principles with the screw type being the most efficient and typically much more expensive.

Fusion 2 Ltd Trading as Fusion Motorsport Registered in England no.5539949. Registered office: 43 Alexandra, Road, Warlingham, Surrey, CR6 9DW.
 Fusion 2 Ltd t/a
Fusion Motorsport
43 Alexandra Road
Warlingham
Surrey
CR6 9DW
Tel: 020 8815 8586

e-mail: info@fusion-motorsport.co.uk
Web: http://www.fusion-motorsport.co.uk

The supercharger in a little more detail

People tend to know a lot more about turbos than the types of supercharger so I shall explain a little more about
how a positive displacement superchargers work. Of all the ones I have mentioned the roots type is the most
common, and so I shall take this as my example.

Illustration 1: Simplified
roots supercharger

Illustration 1 shows a simplified roots type supercharger. The arrows show the direction of air flow and the
direction of the rotors. Both rotors are coupled to each other in a 1:1 ratio and when driven from the crank shaft
of an engine a fixed volume of air literally picked up and moved from the inlet to the outlet of the supercharger.
Spin the supercharger at a rate which produces more air at its outlet than the engine is consuming at its inlet
and you will start to create positive boost, aka forced induction. The ratio of the two will dictate just how much
boost you will make. However in exactly the same way as a turbo, boot limit provisions must be introduced.

Illustration 2:
Typical supercharger
bypass arrangement.

Illustration 2 shows a boost control arrangement. In this case once the desired pressure has been met the
bypass valve can be opened allowing excess pressure to return to the inlet. It is not possible to control boost in
the same way as a turbo – that is limiting the speed of the turbine or in this case the rotors, since this is locked
to the speed of the engine via the belt drive ratio.

You should be able to immediately see the beneficial impact a supercharger can have on an engine, it is
possible to have positive manifold pressures from virtually idle right up to the point where the turbo is able to
take over. Of course this is exactly how the March Superturbo performs and as we have seen by our tests .3 bar
boost at 1000 rpm and .8 bar from 2000 to its cut off point at 4000 rpm, by this time the turbo is able to continue
without the driven losses of the supercharger. You simply cannot get this kind of performance from either a
turbo or supercharger alone.

Fusion 2 Ltd Trading as Fusion Motorsport Registered in England no.5539949. Registered office: 43 Alexandra, Road, Warlingham, Surrey, CR6 9DW.
 Fusion 2 Ltd t/a
Fusion Motorsport
43 Alexandra Road
Warlingham
Surrey
CR6 9DW
Tel: 020 8815 8586

e-mail: info@fusion-motorsport.co.uk
Web: http://www.fusion-motorsport.co.uk

However its not all good. Moving air in this way and indeed pressuring it consumes a lot of energy. Some types
of supercharger may only be 40% efficient meaning that for every additional BHP it produces it takes more than
half a BHP to drive. They also get less efficient after a point as the drive rpm increases, which is why they are
not ideally suited to very high RPM's. The most efficient types as I said earlier are the screw type superchargers
these can be in excess of 85% efficient, but at significant cost when compared to a roots type simply because
they are much harder to manufacture. Finally all superchargers can also produce quite a noise. As the rotors
rotate you get pulses, in the same way you do when the inlet valve opens on an induction cycle. This can be
improved by the more modern twisted vane superchargers, or even further by the screw compressor types, but
even then many people complain about these noises on the factory produced cars such as those by BMW and
Jaguar. Nissan went to great lengths to sound deaden these noises from their March ST, and in all there are
three resonator chambers on the inlet and induction system.

The first steps – Deciding on your design – examining others.

Designing a system like this is not simple. There are many points you will need to consider, some may not
covered here, or ones which you will need to investigate further for your particular application. In any case lets
first take a look at and analyse the layout of components on the Nissan March ST.

Illustration 3: Components and layout of the

March Superturbo induction system.

First of all lets examine the flow path of the intake air. First of all the air enters the turbo shown by the arrow on
the left it then leaves the compressor housing and next meets a Y section in the pipe. From here there are two
options, either via the bypass valve or through the supercharger. These then both join up again through another
Y piece and then into the intercooler. Finally the air leaves the intercooler and into the inlet manifold.

Now although my information on the Lancia Delta S4 is limited compared to the March ST I was able to find the
following interesting diagram.

Fusion 2 Ltd Trading as Fusion Motorsport Registered in England no.5539949. Registered office: 43 Alexandra, Road, Warlingham, Surrey, CR6 9DW.
 Fusion 2 Ltd t/a
Fusion Motorsport
43 Alexandra Road
Warlingham
Surrey
CR6 9DW
Tel: 020 8815 8586

e-mail: info@fusion-motorsport.co.uk
Web: http://www.fusion-motorsport.co.uk

Illustration 4: Components and layout of the

Lancia Delta S4

Illustration 4 shows some interesting discoveries. If Nissan saw this design or not (I would suspect probably not,
since they were both released at virtually the same time on different parts of the world) they are almost identical.
Air enters the air box shown by the bottom left blue arrow. It then leaves and enters the turbo, then into and out
of the intercooler into the supercharger. Now look carefully there is also a bypass valve here connected in
exactly the same way as the march ST. Then out of the supercharger into the intercooler and finally into the inlet
manifold. The only difference between this system and that of the March ST is the additional intercooler
between the turbo and the supercharger. If you were to remove this both designs would be identical.

I feel that this is reason enough to suggest that this is probably the best layout and design of such a system,
and at this present time I do not have any system information of the new Golf TSI and so I am unable to draw
comparisons with this, however I feel the layouts above have merit for the following main reasons:

• The bypass valve not only allows for supercharger boost control as mentioned above but also for complete
bypass of the supercharger once the turbo is operating on its own.

• When the supercharger is creating boost, naturally it will be generating more exhaust gasses. These will
assist the turbo generating boost sooner than it would otherwise. This means that the supercharger is being
assisted by the turbo which may significantly help its efficiency. This is good as we have already discussed
superchargers can require substantial power of their own. This would not be possible if it was the other way
around. You can also note that the additional intercooler on the Lancia would help efficiency of the system
overall even further, buy ensuring that the air entering the supercharger is cool.

There really isn't many other variations on this design to compare against. I have seen systems where the
supercharger is permanently engaged with the turbo blowing into them. This isn't ideal since your always at a
loss due to the supercharger being driven, and there are certain other disadvantages to off throttle performance
where you simply don't need the supercharger connected.

Operational parameters of a compound charged system.

There are many different driving scenarios in which a system like this would operate in ideal conditions.
Essentially it comes down to the ability to control the individual components of the system. A turbo can appear a
totally passive device and simply limit its own boost independently via its wastegate and this is perfectly
acceptable in a system such as this and is exactly how the Nissan took the approach with thir March ST, this is
in fact the most common method in all turbo assisted engines.

Fusion 2 Ltd Trading as Fusion Motorsport Registered in England no.5539949. Registered office: 43 Alexandra, Road, Warlingham, Surrey, CR6 9DW.
 Fusion 2 Ltd t/a
Fusion Motorsport
43 Alexandra Road
Warlingham
Surrey
CR6 9DW
Tel: 020 8815 8586

e-mail: info@fusion-motorsport.co.uk
Web: http://www.fusion-motorsport.co.uk

The same however is not quite so straightforward with the supercharger. It is not necessary to always have a
supercharger engaged, and when they are not they place a huge resistance on the intake airflow. Nissan
realised this and they added an electromechanical clutch to the drive pulley in exactly the same way most air-
con pumps have. They also took complete control of the bypass valve. Not only does it open under idle to
bypass the supercharger when the supercharger is disengaged, it is also able to control the supercharger boost
and fully open once the turbo is making adequate boost.

It is surprisingly complex to achieve this, and Nissan to their credit managed this with a system of bypass valves
solenoids and actuators. It does of course baffle most people when things start to go wrong, as perhaps the
following illustration may demonstrate.

Illustration 5: System control diagram of the

March ST

What we need to establish however is our operational conditions and as a result the required response to them.
I have assumed that for this system work efficiency it will have a bypass valve and electromagnetic clutch, with
the ability to control each.

Operating Condition Supercharger Supercharger Engine RPM Comments

bypass valve clutch
Idle Open Disengaged ~850 No load
Light load (-0.1 to -0.2 Open Disengaged Idle to rev limit Light load
bar or less manifold
pressure)
Heavier load (-0.1 bar or Closed Engaged Less than the limit by which the Drive/accelerate
greater manifold turbo can produce more boost /medium/high load
pressure) March ST – 4000 RPM supercharger assisted
Heavy load above Open Disengaged (-0.1 bar or greater manifold Drive/accelerate
supercharger cut off RPM pressure) March ST – 4000 RPM /medium/high load
(-0.1 bar or greater supercharger assisted
manifold pressure)

Fusion 2 Ltd Trading as Fusion Motorsport Registered in England no.5539949. Registered office: 43 Alexandra, Road, Warlingham, Surrey, CR6 9DW.