Improvement of Defogging Performance of Automobile Defroster using Vortex Generators

Abstract

Fog on the automotive windshield interferes with the sight of the driver and causes serious safety problems; thus, removing it rapidly has been a longstanding goal in the automobile industry. In this study, we propose a novel method for improving the defogging performance of the defroster without its structural alteration by using vortex generators (VGs). To optimize the performance of the VGs, we performed particle image velocimetry experiments, an evaporation measurement experiment, and a numerical simulation for visualizing the airflow from the defroster inlet. The dimensions of the VG (height h = δ and length l = 5δ) were selected according to the boundary-layer thickness, δ, of the lowest-flow rate (ulow = 0.33 m/s) used in the defroster inlet. We employed a dimensionless parameter, i.e., the secondary flow intensity (Se), to quantify the intensity of vortices for several angles of attack (30°, 45°, and 60°). The results indicated that the vortices generated from VGs with a 30° angle of attack retained their maximum intensity until they reached the vision area of the driver. Additionally, we explored two different configurations of VGs—co-rotating and counter-rotating—and concluded that the counter-rotating configuration had higher performance than the co-rotating configuration. The optimized VGs were directly inserted in the defroster inlet and improved the defogging performance by approximately 10%. The proposed method is applicable to various automobile models for enhancing the performance of the defroster regardless of the interior volume, air-ventilation performance, and other conditions, such as the number of passengers and outside temperature.