Automated Turbocharger Development for Future Engine Generations at Daimler Truck AG

As the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles above 6 tons, the Daimler Truck AG is the reference for the national and international heavy-duty transport. In order to offer a tailor-fit powertrain for optimum performance, Daimler Truck AG develops its own turbochargers for heavy-duty truck engines. This work presents a novel development procedure at Daimler Truck AG and its application on the design optimization of the turbocharger’s compressor and turbine stage.The key idea of this novel development procedure is to conduct the design optimization systematically. Numerical optimization approaches, mathematical algorithms and in-house developed tool chains are applied to enable a systematic and automatized design optimization process. Further, parameterized CAD models are used for all stages’ components.Lastly, the development procedure is applied to a baseline turbocharger for a 10.7 l heavy-duty engine in an exemplary prototype project. Within a relatively short development time and few iterations, an efficiency benefit of around 1-1.5 percentage points is measured for the optimized compressor stage and of around 2-3 percentage points on the turbine side.