Trial by Fire: Developing an Open-Top, Sealed Burner that is suitable for the Marketplace in the 21st Century

摘要

Modern gas appliances are being designed and built to higher and higher performance standards. In many cases this dictates that gas burners be specifically designed for the new appliances rather than being able to utilize some "off the shelf commercially available burners. This new paradigm requires that appliance designers become familiar with the "art of gas burners". Simply relying on gas burner vendors for all of the gas burner expertise is no longer acceptable. This paper takes you through a burner development project at BSH-HA. It presents the steps that we took to go from concept to production. As a part of this exercise it also presents the elements necessary for a gas appliance engineer to become an experienced gas burner design engineer. It explains how to gain expertise and experience in gas burner design. During the development of the STAR(~R) BURNER some basic gas burner design rules were followed (STAR(~R) BURNER is a registered trademark of BSH Home Appliances Corporation). These rules should help both the experienced gas appliance engineer and the inexperienced gas appliance engineer. These rules should also help engineers to quickly understand the most critical gas burner design elements and operating criteria. If followed, these rules will help to reduce the time required for the development of a gas appliance. This is because adherence to these rules will eliminate the 10 most common causes of gas burner operating problems and re-design. This paper covers step by step the development techniques used by BSH-HA in developing and perfecting their very commercially successful STAR BURNER. This process included; gathering marketing input, conducting a parametric study, giving engineering feedback to marketing, generating a developmental specification based upon agreed upon criteria, developing 3D designs and layouts, producing 3D parts by utilizing steriolithogrophy, presenting actual 3 D parts to marketing for their review and approval, fabricating burner parts by utilizing CNC equipment, performing early prototype burner testing on test rigs (to get baseline performance), performing early burner testing in prototype appliances, running in-house BOC tests, reliability altitude and field testing, agency certification testing, and finally monitoring the initial production of the product using the STAR BURNER.