Turbocompound can utilize part of the exhaust energy on internal combustion engines; however, it increases exhaust back pressure, and pumping loss. To avoid such drawbacks, divided exhaust period (DEP) technology is combined with the turbocompound engine. In the DEP concept the exhaust flow is divided between two different exhaust manifolds, blowdown and scavenging, with different valve timings. This leads to lower exhaust back pressure and improves engine performance.
Combining turbocompound engine with DEP has been theoretically investigated previously and shown that this reduces the fuel consumption and there is a compromise between the turbine energy recovery and the pumping work in the engine optimization. However, the sensitivity of the engine performance has not been investigated for all relevant parameters. The main aim of this study is to analyze the sensitivity of this engine architecture in terms of break specific fuel consumption to different parameters concerning the gas exchange such as blowdown valve timing, scavenging valve timing, blowdown valve size, scavenging valve size, discharge coefficients of blowdown and scavenging ports, turbine efficiency, turbine size and power transmission efficiency. This study presents the sensitivity analysis of the turbocompound DEP engine to these parameters and defines a set of important parameters that should be examined in experimental studies.
