Heat Transfer Investigation on Center Housing Using Genetic Algorithms and Finite Element Method

Center housing is one of the components of turbocharger which has an undesirable event of excessive heat transfer from turbine side and an excessive heat soak back that lead to oil coking under steady-state conditions and engine shut down conditions. Heat transfer investigation on center housing is necessary to evaluate the designs and prevent oil coking. This paper presents an example of using the genetic algorithms combined to the finite element method to investigate the heat transfer conditions of center housing. First, the basic structure and operation principle of genetic algorithms in heat transfer problem is presented. Then, convection boundary conditions including film heat transfer convection coefficients and bulk temperatures are achieved using genetic algorithms combined with finite element method based on existing test data. Final thermal boundary conditions can be used to predict temperature distribution of center housings before testing in similar applications and which can help re-design the water jacket and oil channel as well in the initial design stage.