Design of horizontal axis washing machine with ball balancer and MR dampers

Abstract

This paper discusses design of a horizontal axis washing machine with a ball balancer and four Magnetorheological (MR) dampers. At first, the minimum motion space needed by the tub and the resistance force for preventing walking are derived for evaluating dynamic performances of the washer. Four MR dampers are designed, manufactured and tested. A multiple-ball model is built for the balancer and two acceleration phases are designed for the spin drying process. Then, simulations are carried out based on a fullfactorial experiment design and the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) method is used to evaluate the significance of six parameters. A cubic polynomial regression model is constructed and parametric optimization is carried out using a hybrid optimization scheme to obtain optimum parameter values. Several control strategies of the MR dampers for enhancing walking resistance capability of the washer are proposed. At last, experiments are done on a prototype of the horizontal axis washer with several conclusions validated.