Windshield Defrosting Modeling and Simulation for the Assessment of Convection Configurations

Frosted windshields are common appearances during the cold season. The defrosting of the car's windshield is carried out by just blowing hot air against the inside of the pane. This yields growing temperatures also on the outside and finally makes the ice melt. What may sound quite trivial from the user's point of view is rather more complex in terms of analysis and design. The physical phenomena involved are fluid flow and heat transfer in the air on both sides of the glass as well as inside (conjugated heat transfer) and the phase change in the solidified water. For designing purposes of course complete CFD simulations and investigations in test rigs will be performed. But these are very time consuming and expensive, especially if parameter variations and optimizations tasks have to be accomplished. In this paper a modeling and simulation approach is presented, which allows a quasi 3D modeling of the defrosting of windshields based on 1D simulation techniques.