Vibro-Acoustic Responses and Pressure Signal Analysis for Early Surge Detection in a Turbocharger Compressor

High-speed centrifugal compressors may be exploited to pressurize fuel cell systems. Nonetheless, due to fuel cells significant interposed volumes, compressor behavior can lead to severe vibrations related to fluid-dynamic instabilities during part load operating conditions. In particular, surge strongly limits centrifugal compressors stable operating region when moving toward low mass flow rates due to a change in system working point. Therefore, compressor dynamic response must be adequately characterized for early surge detection. To this aim, a dedicated experimental activity was conducted on a vaneless diffuser turbocharger coupled to a solid oxide fuel cell emulator plant; compressor evolution toward surge was investigated. Several signal processing techniques were applied to pressure signals as well as vibro-acoustic responses to better predict compressor behavior and classify its status as stable or unstable. Cepstrum, cross-correlation, and wavelet transform have been identified as suitable techniques to define precursors able to early detect surge. By means of cross-correlation function, propagation phenomena in the ducts can be investigated to assess how they interact near compressor low-mass flowrate unstable conditions. Cepstrum provides a convenient way to determine pressure signal spectrum distortion in terms of further periodic components onset. These harmonic components are due to complex system responses generated by transient phenomena; indeed, cepstrum allows to identify hidden anomalous contributions in system response spectra which may arise in incipient surge conditions. Wavelet transform was performed on both structural and pressure response signals to observe their dominant energy contents temporal evolution; indeed, such spectral pattern time-dependent variation can detect the rise of unstable conditions. By exploiting all these techniques, a complete system identification is performed which allows a deeper investigation of the physical phenomena involved; moreover, a more complete set of surge precursors extracted from different probes’ physical signals were defined. The results obtained provide original diagnostic insights for monitoring systems suited to perform early surge detection. Compressor instability prevention can extend its operating range, performance, and reliability to allow better integration with other plant components. Finally, cepstrum application for compressor instability identification can be regarded as a novel method in the fluid machinery field. [