Visualisation and Measurement of Condensed Water in Automobile Headlights

Today headlights are built with transparent polycarbonate front windows. If the air moisture inside the headlight is high and the outside temperature decreases below the dew-point, the air moisture condensates inside and the inner surface of the polycarbonate front window (PCFW) becomes nontransparent (figure 1). To the costumer this appears as an optical defect.In order to avoid the condensation and to speed up the evaporation of the condensed water (condensate) on the PCFW a Computational-Fluid-Dynamic-simulation is used. The simulation results are proceeded to optimise the airflow and the arrangement of the breather holes. An important problem is the validation of the simulated results with the reality. It was necessary to build a non-invasive measurement system for the continuous characterisation of condensated areas without affecting the material properties, the airflow and the light distribution inside the headlight.