Simulation and experimental investigation of the wavy fin-and-tube intercooler

In this paper, flow and heat transfer characteristics in the fin-and-tube intercooler were numerically investigated using the FLUENT software by adopting the porous medium approach, which could obtain the distributions, including temperature, pressure and non-uniform, etc. The effects of the air flow rate on the resistance characteristic and the heat transfer performance were analyzed. The simulation results show that the pressure drop and the heat transfer capacity increase with the increase of air flow rate. Simultaneously, the coolant distribution is uniform in the header with the maximum error within±±10%. Two kinds of coolant flow schemes have an important influence on heat transfer. Those results also confirm that the higher the heat transfer rate, the lower the inlet coolant temperature is. Finally, comparison results show that the numerical results based on the heat transfer model in porous medium agree well with the measured data based on the engine bench test. The conclusions of this paper are of great significance in the improvement of fin-and-tube intercooler.