For automotive performance lovers, knowing the difference between a turbo and naturally aspirated engine is a concept that everyone should know. So what will be your difference? Why is the turbo so admired in the world of automotive performance?
Keep reading and understand the main differences between the turbo and aspirated engine, in addition to understanding how a car can gain up to more than 44% of performance!
How the aspirated engine works
The aspirated engine is one that does not have another device helping to increase the engine's power. Thus, air is drawn in by the movement of the piston inside the combustion chamber.
As a rule, valve activation and combustion depend on the volume of air entering the chamber. With this, the driver perceives an almost linear progression in the vehicle's performance.
The name “aspirated” is due to the fact that, when the piston moves in the cylinder, a lower atmospheric pressure is generated inside the combustion chamber. Thus, air is drawn into the cylinder to generate combustion.
In this sense, aspirated models have some advantages:
Lower production and maintenance cost;
It can give less maintenance problems;
Small changes can generate power gains (exhaust expansion or sports filter, for example);
“Cleaner” sound (for those who like something softer).
While it can bring some disadvantages, such as:
Higher fuel consumption;
For significant gains in power, specialized modifications are required;
If you install a turbo kit on the naturally aspirated engine, it may have less torque at low rpm and oscillations at idle.
What is turbo engine
Turbo engines, as the name implies, use a turbocharger to take advantage of the exhaust gases, which are wasted by the aspirated engine, to use their energy and compress the atmospheric air.
With this, an aspirated engine is able to ingest more air into the combustion chamber, which is essential to extract more power from the engine.
Incidentally, there are fixed and variable turbo. In the fixed model, there is no regulation of the gas flow pressure or pressure. While the variable turbo controls the dosage of exhaust gases that pass through the turbine to regulate the pressure.
How does the turbo engine work?
The turbo and aspirated engine has the big difference that in the turbo model there is a set of components to use the kinetic energy of the exhaust gases to compress the atmospheric air.
Thus, the turbo is composed of two chambers, known as compressor and turbine. This assembly is then connected to the combustion engine's exhaust manifold.
With this, the gases leaving the engine pass through the turbine, which uses the energy of the gases to rotate a rotor, which is interconnected between the two chambers. Because they are connected, the compressor rotor also rotates, allowing atmospheric (filtered) air to be pressurized.
Then pressurized air enters the engine's intake system to participate in combustion. In this way, the engine is able to generate more power with each rotation, unlike the naturally aspirated engine that does not have this step of compressing the air.
What are your advantages
In addition to the obvious gain in power, the turbo engine also brings other benefits:
Depending on the peak torque, the vehicle saves fuel, as it does not need as much energy to gain and sustain speed;
Offers more comfort;
Improves engine response time;
Allows safer overtaking and retaking, even at low rpm;
Turbo engines emit less polluting gases as they harness the energy of the gases to improve engine efficiency.
So, what is the difference between a turbo and naturally aspirated engine?
In short, the big difference between a turbocharged and naturally aspirated engine is in the way in which the air reaches the combustion cylinders. In the aspirated model, the air is “sucked in” by atmospheric pressure, while the turbo engines use the turbocharger set to supply pressurized air, taking advantage of the exhaust gases.
In fact, it is worth noting that there is no difference if one engine lasts longer than the other. Many people believe that the turbo engine lasts less than the aspirated one, or even that the turbo damages transmission components.
However, we see that a factory turbocharged engine has the same duration as the aspirated one, since the entire set was designed to receive the turbo. Therefore, a modified aspirated engine will have a shorter useful life, as it depends on several factors, from the quality of the turbo kit applied to the way in which the vehicle was prepared.
In the case of the transmission, the reason is the same: a factory turbo car was fully designed to receive greater torque, so there is no damage in durability.
Does turbo and aspirated engine make a difference in Remap?
Now that you already know the differences between turbo and aspirated engines, here's another one: did you know that the turbo engine has more gain in Remap?
What is remap?
Remap, or reprogramming of the Electronic Injection Central (ECU), is nothing more than changing the central software. How it functions as the brain of the vehicle, whilechange the parameters of the control tables, it is possible to release more power and torque.
Why do turbo engines earn more with Remap than aspirated ones?
Generally speaking, an aspirated engine with our Remap STK improves by about 10% in power and torque. On the other hand, factory turbo engines can average 30% in dyno-proven torque and power gains.
In fact, in some cases, turbo engines can exceed 40%. For example, the BMW 320I Turbo, which comes from the factory with 184cv, now has 265cv after the Remap Strike Brasil, a gain of 81cv in power.
Another interesting example is the Golf GTI 2.0 Mk7, which has 220hp, but after the Remap STK, it reached an incredible 310hp, an increase of 90hp!
However, why the turbo and aspirated engine do not have the same gains? As we have seen in this text, the naturally aspirated engine is already less powerful and weaker, so software changes have a marginal gain compared to the gains of turbo engines.
Source: https://strikebrasil.com
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