Abstract
Turbocharger has a main purpose on recycling of the exhaust gas from the engine cylinder. On the basis of the facility characteristics, the turbocharger supported on floating ring bearings has some problems such as the large volume, oil supplement for lubrication and high power loss due to high operating torque. The air foil bearing has been studied as the bearing element to be able to alternate the floating ring bearing without the problems of the floating ring bearing. In this study, the air foil bearing has 2 parts; journal and thrust bearings, and the test facility consists of the engine, exhaust and intake parts. In addiction, the specification of the turbocharger follows a small turbocharger for SUV engine. The engine speed is varied from 750 (idle rpm) to 2,500 rpm and then, the rotating speed of the turbocharger rotor is accelerated from 0 to 100,000 rpm. From those experiments, the comparison between the performances of the air foil bearing and floating ring bearing is conducted and the results show that the air foil bearing has less power loss, maximum 770 watt, than the floating ring bearing, maximum 5,110 watt. This result verifies that the air foil bearing is more efficient and able to output more power under the same condition of the input power.
