Journal of Auto-vehicle Safety Association ISSN:2005-9396(Print) 자동차안전학회지

The windshield of a vehicle plays an important role in ensuring driver safety and maintaining visibility. To prevent issues such as frost and mist from occurring inside and outside the vehicle, research related to the defrosting performance of the windshield is being conducted. Evaluating defrosting performance requires accurate thermal flow analyses. Therefore, in this study, a defrosting duct was constructed within a chamber at an actual vehicle scale to evaluate its performance, and a finite element model was developed and verified. To evaluate defrosting performance, the temperature of the windshield was measured under condition with a mass flow rate of 0.1 kg/s, which corresponds to that of a typical midsize vehicle. A total of 45 thermocouples were arranged at equal intervals of 9 widths and 5 lengths on the windshield to measure the temperature and compare it with the temperature predicted through finite element analysis. A volume grid was created in the main flow area to ensure accurate thermal flow analyses, and a prism layer was added at the interface between the windshield and fluid. In total, 6 million grid systems were formed. Comparing the temperature fields of the experimental results and the finite element analysis results confirmed a similar defrosting pattern, with an average temperature difference of 0.64K.