Modeling and Dynamic Analysis of a Washing Machine with Leg, Cabinet and Gasket

摘要

A drum type washing machine uses less water, saves space and less wear on clothes compared to classical washing machine.Because of these advantages, customers prefer to use a drum type washing machine.So manufacturers dedicate to production of a drum type washing machine.Vibration of a drum type washing machine during operation is very sensitive issue compared to the classical washing machine because the drum type washing machine is usually installed in indoor of a house.So, system design to reduce the vibration should be conducted.In order to perform such design, numerical simulation model of a drum type washing machine should be developed accurately employing CAE tools and using developed model, vibration characteristic should be analyzed accurately.Vibration generated by unbalanced laundry in a drum of a drum-type washing machine passes through a gasket which is a rubber material that connects a tub and a cabinet, a cabinet, legs and pedestal and then excites ground.So, a role of gasket, legs and pedestal for vibration of the system is important to analyze the vibration accurately. Therefore, not only modeling of a drum, a tub, a cabinet and suspension systems are important, but also modeling of a gasket and legs are important task for an accurate multibody model.In the present study, a drum type washing machine with legs, a cabinet and a gasket was modeled as multibody system using DADS which is multibody CAE tool.Because a gasket is a rubber material and it has complex shape, a characteristic of the gasket should be highly nonlinear.However, because a deformation of the gasket is small during operation,stiffness characteristic of the gasket can be approximated as linear.So, the gasket was modeled as an equivalent linear spring.Stiffness of the spring was obtained by tuning compared with transient responses of experimental results.Characteristics of suspension and legs were also obtained by tuning compared with transient responses of experimental results.Simulation results were obtained by employing all the above components and accuracy of the full model was validated by comparing the simulation results with experimental results.