TURBO-ROTOR BALANCING AND OPTIMIZATION USING GROOVE-GEOMETRY SIMULATION APPROACH

Turbochargers use the energy from the exhaust gases to power the compressor, improving the engine's efficiency and reducing emissions. Working fluid runs past the turbine spin blades while the wheel rotates at high speeds with centrifugal forces acting on it. The primary focus of the work is on the turbine wheels of turbochargers. The wheels are prone to faults because they are manufactured using a casting process. Many failures and vibrations in the turbocharger are caused by mass imbalance. In order to mass balance the turbine wheel, back face material must be removed. The wheel's strength and load-carrying capacity must be preserved when material is removed. The turbine wheels are made of inconel. Two-plane balance is used to make several adjustments to the back face. The balancing cut could put the wheel under more stress depending on a number of factors. Trial and error is still used frequently, but it is a time-consuming procedure that involves many iterations. The goal of this research is to determine the key elements that cause stress to rise during balancing cut, as well as how their behaviour can change, and to identify locations on the back face of the turbine wheel where stress levels are acceptable and material can be removed. In this work, the ANSYS simulation is used to validate analytical calculations for the cut and back face of the turbine wheel. Optimisation is used to determine the best location for the groove on the turbine wheel back face. Optimisation methods are applied within the ANSYS software to comprehend the nature of the response and DOEs and to obtain the best feasible solutions for the problem. High depth of cut and tip radius contribute to higher material removal, enhancing the balancing capacity by approximately 22.44%. The provided parametric correlation table allows for simple to understand the connection between all of the parameters considered in the balancing groove optimisation.