Efficiency is an eternal development direction for automobiles, and the emergence of forced air intake devices such as turbocharging and mechanical supercharging has gradually dominated the market due to their stronger power advantages at the same displacement.
In its development history, there has been a relatively unique mechanical supercharger.
It has a turbocharger like appearance, but is driven by the crankshaft, with features such as low energy consumption and excellent NVH performance.
It was once short-lived in the automotive market, but now it has been widely used in the fields of air conditioning and refrigeration. It is a vortex type mechanical supercharger, which Volkswagen once named G-Lader.
The only traceable examples of vortex type superchargers are the G40 and G60 superchargers developed by Volkswagen in the last century, which were briefly used in performance cars under the brand.
It adopts a vortex boosting method, consisting of two sets of spiral blades, a cam, a housing, and a sealing plate. A crescent shaped working chamber is formed between the two spiral blades, and the center position is the exhaust hole. For this type of mechanical supercharger, the width of the spiral blades plays a decisive role in the exhaust volume. Therefore, the commonly named G40 and G60 represent a spiral blade width of 40mm and 60mm, respectively.
During the working process, the engine power drives the cam to rotate, and the spiral blades connected to the cam undergo revolution. As a result, the volume of the crescent shaped working chamber moves from the outside to the inside. During the movement, the volume of the working chamber continuously decreases, compressing the internal air until it reaches the position of the central discharge hole where the minimum volume and maximum pressure are reached, providing high-pressure intake for the engine.
During this process, the direction and size of the air inside each crescent cavity are opposite, consistent, and cancel each other out, resulting in smooth and quiet operation. At the same time, due to being directly driven by the crankshaft, the response is rapid, and a relatively wide torque platform can be constructed. However, the high requirements for machining accuracy and low boost efficiency have gradually made it disappear from the automotive field.
