Control of water contamination on side window of road vehicles by A-pillar section parameter optimization

Abstract

The water contamination on the side windows of moving vehicles is a crucial issue in improving the driving safety and the comfort. In this paper, an effective optimization method is proposed to reduce the water contamination on the side windows of automobiles. The accuracy and the efficiency of the numerical simulation are improved by using the lattice Boltzmann method, and the Lagrangian particle tracking method. Optimized parameters are constructed on the basis of the occurrence of the water deposition on a vehicle’s side window. The water contamination area of the side window and the aerodynamic drag are considered simultaneously in the design process; these two factors are used to form the multi- objective optimization function in the genetic algorithm (GA) method. The approximate model, the boundary-seeded domain method, and the GA method are combined in this study to enhance the optimization efficiency. After optimization, the optimal parameters for the A-pillar section are determined by setting the boundary to an area of W = 7.77 mm, L = 1.27 mm and H =11.22 mm. The side window’s soiling area in the optimized model is reduced by 66.93%, and the aerodynamic drag is increased by 0.41% only, as compared with the original model. It is shown that the optimization method can effectively solve the water contamination problem of side windows.