• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.2441-2451
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• 2012

This paper presents the design of a control system for improving performance of a washer fluid heating system (WFHS) which is capable of removing frost, ice, snow and/or other debris from windshield. First, for the WFHS, a modeling process is described, and the extraction of characteristic parameters of the model are made by experimental studies. Design variables that affect on performance of the WFHS are also presented. Secondly, a control system is proposed for improving heating performance of the WFHS, and its performance is verified through experiments. The key feature of the proposed control system is to regulate the current of a booster converter input to the WFHS up to the target value that is set to guarantee heating performance. Target current is calculated by using initial temperature value and employing the mathematical model derived in the paper. Computer simulation and experimental results show that the proposed control system can perform heating operations in a way to satisfy per-determined target performance of the WFHS.