Camera Monitor System Soiling Correlation for a Class-8 Truck Using Lattice Boltzmann Method

As Camera Monitoring Systems (CMS) become an integrated part of the driving experience for current automotive and heavy vehicles, keeping the CMS clean from water, dirt, sand, snow and ice is a main focus of the design process in order to avoid safety issues due to obscured visibility. On-road soiling prevention becomes an important feature when designing the camera and sensor systems. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis can be used to facilitate the design process, to provide important information of the cause of the problems and design mitigation mechanism to prevent the visibility issues. Most of existing work focusses on automotive applications. This paper is targeted for heavy vehicle application. Road tests were performed in Alaska by the testing department. Results from the road test were compared to CFD simulation. This comparison showed a good agreement between CFD and road testing, based on the qualitative soiling deposition patterns, rivulet formation and dispersed wake-based deposition in the sensor regions.