Superchargers for Top Fuel/Top Alcohol (1 Viewer)

[flapjack]

So DMPE does a lot of work for many different TF teams, Al Anabi in particular. Are SSI and PSI still active in TF development? I know these were popular a while ago. Then came the Gibbs-Miller supercharger. Now DMPE. What do JFR and DSR do? My guess is that certain parts are off the shelf but the rest is customized. I wonder if CFD is used in the design, or if there is a physical way of testing a design. My understanding is that the NHRA has cracked down on design improvements, so I am left wondering if various supercharger manufacturers and/or teams still put any effort into redesign. I didn't know the roots style supercharger was developed in the 1860s are a way of pumping more air into furnaces. Pretty cool.

 

[flapjack]

Found some interesting scholarly articles on CFD analysis of roots type superchargers, but they either cost $40, or were for two lobe blowers. Plus they used really expensive software (ANSYS), which I don't think most supercharger (for drag racing) manufacturers would have. Fluent would probably be the best software to use, but I think they have been part of ANSYS for a while now. To give you an idea on how much that software costs, you are looking at 20K per year per seat. That is why I have often wondered if teams pair up with universities, because universities have access to software like that for research.

 

[parrotwhisperer]

This may give you an idea of how far blowers have come. I remember going to the Indy Nationals as a kid +-1968 1969 and watching Mikey Thompson test blowers. He had a bunch of blowers in that looked to be new in the box in back of a pickup. The boxes were sealed and he was removing them from the boxes and hooking them up to a fixture where he would apply air pressure to them and essentially do a leak down test to see how long they held pressure. He picked the "tightest" one and put it on his funny car. I think it was the blue Mustang that Ongias drove that got the chosen blower. If I remember right he had a red Mustang as well that may have been driven by P Foster but I am not sure.

 

[flapjack]

Now they check rotor clearances between rounds and re-strip them if need be. I can only imagine that blowers have become more consistent now that they are made from billet stock instead of cast.