can an intercooler be too big?

Fck it! I am going to do it anyway.
I am pretty sure it will work.
Its only an engine! So what if it blows up, all in the name of experimentation.

 

i would tend to disagree with your comments.

you need to minimise turbulence so as to minimise total pressure drop across the IC. You can't avoid some turbulence but you want to minimise it.
Heat transfer is due to forced convection over a very large surface area due to the IC 'fins', plates etc. The idea of the IC is to provide maximum surface area, and slow the air right down to maximise heat transfer.
The IC entry needs to be as gentle as possible to avoid flow separation and increased pressure drop.
The convergence of the IC exit can be more severe as air is more tolerant to converging flows than diverging flows.
The same is true for the cooling air from the front of the car passing through the IC matrix; ideally you want ducting slightly smaller than the IC exposed area. The air then expands as it hits the matrix and slows down, increasing effciency through the core. You woul dthen have ducting at the rear of the IC back to the same size as the opening at the front of the car.
However, this is difficult if not impossible in most road cars, especially FWD ones with minimal space

Cheers,
tt

 

surely, air blasted into the front of an intercooler at 80mph doesn't have any time to expand?

 

nah, plenty of time

tt

 

That's what i mean by it's a balancing act, it NEEDS turbulance or you
get a laminar flow effect, think of a river, a leaf on the surface will
be moving quickly, but one on the bottom will be moving slowley because
of surface tension. you need enough spped to create turbulance to break
up the laminar flow, but little enough to allow the air to stay in the
cooler long enough to get cooled to any decent degree.



Larger IC give better results for 2 main reasons, one is that the air
expands faster entering the larger volume of the IC from the inlet hose
creating turbulance and the secong is the increased surface area (in
cooling, surface area is king)



Theres no substitute for surface area though.

 

All my intercooler problems have been solved.
Having one made by a leading I/C company.
Cheers for all you input, I am going to leave it to them.

 

You will never ever see laminar flow in a small capacity IC engine:
a) because of the velocities involved
b) becasue the nature of the flow is unsteady , not constant

What you're talking about is boundary layer; Nice leaf/river analogy though

Let's not have a physics argument anyway, JC's solved his problem. We'll agree to disagree

tt

 

Excellent!, pull up chair and the sunglasses (lest we be blinded by science)