Research on the influence of the guide vane on the performances of intercooler based on the end-to-end predication model

Abstract

In order to fundamentally solve the problem of poor air flow uniformity in the cooling pipe of the heavy-duty vehicle intercooler, which leads to poor heat exchange effect, this paper innovatively proposes to add a guide vane in the air chamber of the intercooler. The air flow uniformity in the cooling pipe of the heavy-duty vehicle intercooler is investigated under different structural parameters of guide vane based on the established end-to-end model. In fact, the end-to-end prediction model is innovatively proposed to characterize the relationship between the structural parameters of guide vane and performance parameters without conducting the high-cost and long-term experiments or numerical simulation. Besides, structure parameters of guide vane with the optimal airflow uniformity coefficient are obtained using genetic algorithm (GA), that is, the diversion angle (α) is 18°, the width of rectangular holes in the guide vane (L) is 6 mm and the number of rectangular holes in the guide vane (N) is 3. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the optimized intercooler is validated and it is found that the airflow uniformity coefficient of the optimized intercooler is 0.983, which is 5.25% higher than the original structure, the outlet temperature is reduced by 8.2 °C.