Strictly speaking, yes. Back pressure is just the pressure that must be overcome in order to negate frictional losses from walls, pulse reflections and turbulence, a factor that isnt helped when you only have the atmosphere pumping the air in on the inlet side of an N/A engine. Stick a cylinder head on a flow bench and increase the port sizes noting the effect. More air in = less pressure loss or back pressure depending on how you define it though this isnt always good for torque lower in the rev range. Its a pretty major problem in intercoolers since you need to induce turbulence to encourage convective heat transfer by using internal fins which also increase heat transfer surface area inside the intercooler to further increase the heat transfer, both of which increase back pressure or the pressure drop across the system due to these factors which in turn loses you boost pressure (lower temps = more ignition advance and denser charge so a slight loss in pressure across the intercooler is acceptable as a tradeoff for more overall engine output).
Can you tell Ive just written 10,000 words on and around this subject for a Uni assignment. The poor writing is due to a complete lack of sleep
, hope the assignment aint written as badly as this post!
