Compressor Surging

What to do about surging. Experts at Turbonetics and elsewhere can

certainly add depth to what I have to say here, but you can't expect too
much out of them for free. You're right, the obvious thing is to limit
boost to stay out of the surge zone, by adjusting the wastegate.
Preferred solution is to select the most suitable compressor for your
application that allows you to run desired boost without surge. Since
surge tends to be an issue mainly at lower rpms due to the nature of
turbocharged engines (study a compressor map if you're not already
familiar with this phenomenon), a possible solution can be to select a
larger turbine housing to delay the increase of boost with rpm so that
the WOT boost curve on the compressor map misses the surge zone. A
sophisticated electronic control *could* be devised to guide the turbo
past the surge zone, but I've never heard of this actually being done
ever. It would certainly need to be carefully calibrated for the
application, taking into account varying environmental and operating
conditions. I work in a group that develops engine management systems
for natural gas truck and bus engines. Our strategy is to size the turbo
such that surge is impossible under any normal operating conditions. In
addition, our electronics will be able to detect, from rapidly changing
airflow and manifold pressure, if surge is inadvertently encountered. A
severe intake restriction or operation at very low atmospheric pressure
such as at very high altitude are two possible causes of surge in a
engine that normally operates nowhere near the surge zone. In this
unlikely event, our system will take action to quickly take the engine
out of surge. This corrective action will effectively derate the engine,
which is proper and necessary under such conditions in any event.

Manifestations of surge. There are four surge phenomena I have

personally observed. One, which I am not completely sure was surge,
occurred when I was test driving the used Merkur that I subsequently
bought. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the wastegate hose was broken. It
was the first Merkur (or turbocharged car of any kind) I had driven any
distance, so I was completely unfamiliar with expected turbo behavior
and boost levels. At full throttle on this test drive, boost rose
quickly through the red zone, setting off the buzzer. As this happened
very quickly and as explained above, I did not realize it was abnormal,
I did not let off the gas immediately. At somewhere over 20 psi, the
engine bucked noisily a couple of times before I finally let off the
gas. All this took only a second or two from the moment the buzzer
sounded. After I bought the car, I soon found and fixed the wastegate
hose. Another incidence of surge that is quite familiar to me is the
fluttering sound (several times per second) synchronized with the
rapidly up and down changing volume of the turbo whistle made by a
intercooled throttled engine with no compressor bypass valve, when the
throttle is closed suddenly while the boost is high, e.g. during
initiation of a manual shift. The third manifestation I have observed
occurred during an engine development project. The engine was running at
steady state WOT, when suddenly its torque just seemed to collapse and
the resistance of the dyno stalled the engine. This occurred near peak
torque rpm but not at higher rpms. We repeated this test many times
while troubleshooting our fuel and ignition systems. These were
eventually eliminated as potential causes. Our data from these tests
showed the onset of rapidly fluctuating air flow, with the fluctuation
increasing in magnitude prior to the engine stalling. I theorized that
the turbo could be surging. Unfortunately, we did not have ready access
to a compressor map to check this theory, so I just reduced the
wastegate setting from 18 psi to 15 psi. The problem disappeared. A
fourth I encounter occasionally with my modified Merk. I have the 0.36
A/R turbine housing, which increases low rpm boost and an intercooler
which increases mass airflow rate, other things being equal. Both of
these effects move the compressor operating point toward the surge line.
It's no big surprise that I sometimes get a mild "rocking" sensation
when at a fairly steady state condition climbing a hill at say 2000 rpm
with 15 psi boost. I suppose this could be the wastegate or knock
control, but I never get it at higher rpms, and if I lug the engine down
lower than this it gets worse. As I've said, it occurs rarely and is
pretty mild, so I am content to leave things as they are and drive
around it.

What is happening. The compressor blades are analogous to a wing. As

they move through the air, they direct the movement of the air according
to their aerodynamic design. If an airfoil is operated at an angle of
attack beyond its design limit, the flow on the low pressure side of the
foil separates instead of following its contour. This condition is known
as "stall". The surge line indicates where the pressure differential,
air velocity, and compressor rpm conditions combine to define the
aerodynamic limits of a particular compressor. If operated at or beyond
this line, the compressor stalls and surges in and out of stall until
external changes are imposed to keep the compressor away from this zone.

We recently encountered a new and interesting failure on a Sulzer 9RTA-58 engine. The initial
symptom was surging of the turbocharger, requiring an investigatory strip down.

What we found was some quite severe damage to the nozzle ring and some blade tip damage on
the tubine itself. We also found some unusually large pieces of metal (up to 75x50mm) within
the gas inlet, which could not be attributed to any damage within the turbocharger itself.

As the strip down progressed, we eventually found the source of the problem. The engine
exhaust gas reciever has an expansion joint midway along the engine. The metal heat shield for
this joint had disintegrated, the exhuast flow had carried pieces through the turbocharger gas
inlet casing, breaking through a heavy duty metal gid in the process. This is what caused the
nozzle ring damage.

Fortunately, the larger pieces did not make in though the nozzle ring, and the turbine itself
suffered only minor damage. Nonetheless, and expensive repair.