An approach for IC engine exhaust gas energy recovery, named as steam-assisted turbocharging (SAT), is developed to assist the exhaust turbocharger. A steam generating plant is coupled to the exhaust turbo-charged engine's exhaust pipe, which uses the high-temperature exhaust gas to generate steam. The steam is injected into turbine inlet and used as the supplementary working medium for turbine. By this means, turbine output power and then boosting pressure can be promoted due to the increase of turbine working medium. To reveal the advantages and energy saving potentials of SAT, this concept was applied to an exhaust turbocharging engine, and a parameter analysis was carried out. Research results show that, SAT can effectively promote the low-speed performances of IC engine, and make the peak torque shift to low-speed area. At 1500 r/min, the intake gas pressure can reach the desired value and the torque can be increased by 25.0% over the exhaust turbocharging engine, while the pumping mean effective pressure (PMEP) and thermal efficiency only have a slight increase. At 1000 r/min, the improvement of IC engine performances is very limited due to the low exhaust gas energy. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.