Journal Article
Investigation of Compressor Whoosh Noise in Automotive Turbochargers
2009-05-19
2009-01-2053
With swelling gasoline prices, automotive OEMs have taken different approaches to improve vehicle fuel economy. One trend is to down-size the engine and to add turbo charging. One of the challenges in utilizing the turbocharger in passenger cars is to control the added NVH issues associated with this hardware, especially for the North American market where turbocharger use is scarce in gasoline engines. In this paper, the authors review an investigation on turbocharger related “whoosh” noise on a V6 engine. The whoosh noise, also called surge noise, is caused by the compressor working at or near surge conditions. Whoosh noise is a broad frequency band flow noise typically found during throttle tip-in conditions, but sometimes found even at steady state driving conditions. The root cause of whoosh noise and the detection methods are discussed in this paper. The countermeasures to reduce whoosh noises are also discussed.