Turbo-diesel, also written as turbodiesel and turbo diesel, refers to any Diesel engine equipped with a turbocharger. As per other engine types, turbocharging a diesel engine can greatly increase its power output. Turbocharging of diesel engines began in the 1920s with large marine and stationary engines. Trucks became available with turbo-diesel engines in the mid-1950s, followed by passenger cars in the late-1970s. Since the 1990s, the compression ratio of turbo-diesel engines has been dropping.
Principle
Diesel engines are typically well suited to turbocharging due to the following two factors:
A "lean" air–fuel ratio, caused when the turbocharger supplies excess air into the engine, is not a problem for diesel engines. This is because the torque control is dependent on the mass of fuel that is injected into the combustion chamber, rather than the quantity of the air-fuel mixture.
The additional quantity of air in the cylinder due to turbocharging effectively increases the compression ratio, which, in a gasoline engine, can cause pre-ignition and high exhaust gas temperatures. However, in a diesel engine, fuel is not present in the combustion chamber during the compression stroke, since it is only added to the combustion chamber shortly before the piston reaches top dead centre. Thus, no pre-ignition can occur.
The turbocharger was invented in the early 20th century by Alfred Büchi, a Swiss engineer and the head of diesel engine research at the Gebrüder Sulzer engine manufacturing company. The turbocharger was originally intended to be used on diesel engines, since Büchi's patent of 1905 noted the efficiency improvements that a turbocharger could bring to diesel engines. However, it took until 1925 for the first production turbocharged engines to be manufactured— 10-cylinder turbo-diesel marine engines producing and used by the German "Preussen" and "Hansestadt Danzig" passenger ships. By the late 1920s, several manufacturers were producing large turbo-diesels for marine and stationary use, such as Sulzer Bros., MAN, Daimler-Benz and Paxman. Subsequent improvements in technology made it feasible to use turbochargers on smaller engines that ran at higher engine speeds, therefore turbo-diesel locomotive engines began appearing in the late 1940s. Use of turbo-diesel engines in road-going vehicles began with trucks in the early 1950s. The prototype MAN MK26 truck was unveiled in 1951, followed by the production model MAN 750TL1 turbo-diesel in 1954. The Volvo Titan Turbo truck was also introduced in 1954. By the late 1960s, demand for increasingly powerful truck engines led to turbo-diesels being produced by Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Scania and Caterpillar Inc. In 1952, the Cummins Diesel Special became the first turbocharged car to compete at the Indianapolis 500motor race and qualified on pole position. The car was powered by a inline-six engine producing. Research into smaller turbo-diesel engines for passenger cars was undertaken by several companies through the 1960s and 1970s. Rover built a prototype 2.5 litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel in 1963, and Mercedes-Benz used a five-cylinder intercooled turbo-diesel engine in the 1976 Mercedes-Benz C111-IID experimental vehicle. The first turbo-diesel production car was the Mercedes-Benz 300SD saloon, which was sold in the United States from mid-1978 and powered by the OM617 five-cylinder engine. A year later, the Peugeot 604 D Turbo became the first turbo-diesel car to be sold in Europe. Turbo-diesel cars began to be widely built and sold in Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s, a trend that has continued to the present day. Since the 1990s, the compression ratio of turbo-diesel engines has been dropping. This is due to better specific power and better exhaust-emission behaviour of turbocharged engines with a lower compression ratio. Indirect injected engines used to have compression ratios of 18.5 or higher. Following the introduction of common rail engines in the late 1990s, compression ratios decreased to the range of 16.5 to 18.5. Some diesel engines built since 2016 to comply with the Euro 6 exhaust emissions regulations have a compression ratio of 14.0.
Characteristics
Turbocharging can greatly increase the power output of a diesel engine, bringing the peak power closer to that of an equivalent petrol engine. Diesel cars comprised 50% of new car registrations in Europe in 2014, with many of these cars using a turbo-diesel engine.
