Patent ID: 8459224

Claim:
An air intake apparatus for a vehicle, comprising: a throttle valve that is placed in an intake passage and is adapted to adjust a quantity of air to be drawn into an internal combustion engine of the vehicle; an intake manifold that is located on a downstream side of the throttle valve in a flow direction of the air in the intake passage and includes: a surge tank that has an enlarged passage cross-sectional area, which is larger than a passage cross-sectional area of an adjacent upstream portion of the intake passage that is adjacent to the surge tank and is located on an upstream side of the surge tank in the flow direction of the air; and a plurality of intake branches, each of which is located on a downstream side of the surge tank in the flow direction of the air and guides the air toward a corresponding one of a plurality of cylinders of the internal combustion engine, wherein a lower edge of each connection between the surge tank and a corresponding one of the plurality of intake branches is placed above a lower portion of the surge tank in a vertical direction in an installed state of the air intake apparatus where the air intake apparatus is installed to the vehicle; a communication conduit that communicates between an upstream portion of the intake passage, which is located on an upstream side of the throttle valve in the flow direction of the air, and at least one of the plurality of intake branches while bypassing the surge tank; a drain conduit that communicates between the lower portion of the surge tank and the communication conduit in the installed state of the air intake apparatus; a switching valve that is placed on an upstream side of a connection between the communication conduit and the drain conduit in the flow direction of the air in the communication conduit and is adapted to open or close the communication conduit; and a control device that controls the switching valve to open or close the switching valve, wherein the control device closes the switching valve when an operational state of the internal combustion engine is in one of idling time, accelerating driving time and high speed driving time of the vehicle, and the control device opens the switching valve when the operational state of the internal combustion engine is in decelerating driving time of the vehicle.