The screw blower is one of the mightiest power adders known to man when it comes to internal combustion engines. An enhancement over the traditional Roots style blower, the screw is capable of helping an engine produce prodigious horsepower. The only thing you need to know about how good they are is the number of drag racing classes they are banned from. Other than the tight regulations of turbochargers, you won’t find another thing that is “disallowed” more than the screw style supercharger. Knowing that, the next logical question is why? What’s the magic here?
Of course there is no “magic” but there is some solid physics and interesting stuff that makes a screw blower lots better than the Roots blower that it was effectively born from. Below we have a sweet 3D animation from MAN that really does a nice job at showing how the huffer works.
Outside of race cars there are massive industrial uses for blowers as “air movers”. Factories and other industrial environments employ centrifugal blowers, roots blowers, and screw blowers to o the job. In fact, most “supercharger” companies out there have an industrial side of the business that far outstrips the racing side. No kidding! In case you did not know, when the Roots brothers created the Roots blower they did not do it for racing purposes, they did it to help ventilate mine shafts. Now ya know! Watch the video below.
