System-approach Implementation for Drum Washing Machine Robust Noise Design

Q.Zeng, H.Wee, D.Choi Samsung Electronics CO.,LTD 416, Maetan-3dong, Yeongtong-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do, 443-742, Korea email: qinqian.zeng@samsung.com

1. Abstract
This paper describes a system engineering approach to allocate washing machine system level noise requirement to subsystem and components by deriving acoustical or vibratory power transfer function among system, subsystem and components. A system functional decomposition of the washing machine system is conducted to establish the hierarchical acoustical or vibratory power transmission path among the system. Transfer functions to represent airborne and structure borne acoustic power transfer are derived quantitatively among subsystems and components experimentally. All derived transfer function together with hierarchical system is implemented into an excel-based tool to carry out the sensitivity analysis and identify the critical noise contributors, further more, noise requirement at component level can be specified and handed over to component design owners to achieve detailed component design. This paper showcases an example to achieve 6 dB noise reductions effectively for a drum type washing machine after ranking the noise contributors using the tool. Finally, the process and methodology is validated experimentally after designing new components to meet the top level noise level.

2. Introduction
There are two types of washing machine: top loading and front loading (drum washing machine). Either type of washing machine can be deceivably simple to most of the people as a regular box from its appearance. However, inside the drum type washing machine frame, components such as motor, drum, tub, pump, noise and vibration absorbing dampers and diaphragm are assembled in a very tight space. The complexity of multiple noise sources and transmission mechanisms makes quiet noise design a challenging issue, especially with demanding requirements on fixed footprint, low cost, large washing capacity and higher spinning speed. According to the standard, the noise specification is defined at maximum specified spinning stage, which has the highest rotating speed and leads to highest noise level. Noise emitted from a washing machine has been considered as an indicator for the quality of washing machine product. All washing machine manufacturers are compelled to seek various methods and processes to achieve low noise design or design annoying features out of the products. Reference [1] analyzed radiated noise from a washing machine frame and identified the key surface contributors of the frame. In order to avoid the change of system dynamics to reduce the force transmitted from damper to frame, the author optimized the frame to reduce the noise radiation. Likewise, same author [2] analyzed the contribution due to the pump excitation to frame radiated noise, connection component between pump and frame was designed to minimize the power transmission. Given the fact that structure resonances in the system are the fundamental cause of the structure borne noise, tremendous research work has been focused on analyzing and optimizing the entire washing machine dynamic system. Refer [3][4] developed a fundamental model to drive physical understanding of the impact of different suspension constrains of washing machine. The analysis helps design engineer to predict the overall vibration response in order to prevent washing machine walking on the floor, thus to choose appropriate suspension design parameters. Refer [5] developed a lumped-mass model for washing machine system and was able to integrate the liquid balancer dynamics into the system model.
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Even with accumulated knowledge to reduce component level noise through the years, a model-based system level tool is essential to allocate top level noise requirement to washing machine components before starting detailed component level design. Working on certain component or path that is not critical to total noise is not only misleading, also a waste of resource. To tackle the noise problem properly with minimal engineering resource and deliver the product to market within shortest development cycle, critical noise source and transmission path have to be quantitatively identified and noise mitigation plan have to be developed even before preliminary design stage. Thus, the noise requirement for each component can be determined as soon as the top level requirement is defined. This paper presents a systematic approach to enable system level noise requirement cascading to component level for a drum type washing machine. Firstly, functional system decomposition is represented to understand the noise source and energy transmission path with different mechanisms. Secondly, all critical transfer functions representing how energy is transferred from the source to receiver through various transmission paths are derived. Then an excel-based tool is developed to implement the hierarchical relationship and track the functional relationship. In addition, a case is demonstrated how to use to tool achieve 6 dB reduction from baseline by allocating noise reduction requirements to critical components.

3. System decomposition
A system usually can be decomposed based on certain discipline such as physical structure connectivity or functional performance. System structure decomposition helps to understand how the system is composed and what members are in the system: mainly, the elements, interface, even the context (boundary). Functional decomposition decomposes the system based on its functional performance, in details, how do the elements in the system interact among each other to realized system function, the input and output relationship among elements in the system. System decomposition serves as a foundation to clearly present and define the system for further analysis. A drum washing machine structural decomposition view is presented in Figure 1. It shows the main components and the connectivity in the system. Motor drives drum via shaft that holds the laundry and has rotational movement for washing and spinning. Tub, a stationary part, is connected with shaft and placed outside of the drum co-axially but with 7~15 mm clearance to hold the water for the system. Drum/tub/motor as a subsystem is supported inside the machine frame by damper on the bottom and hung by spring from the top. Both spring and damper are attached to outside frame. Rubber type material made diaphragm connects tub with door. And pump is attached to the bottom of the frame for water drainage. Other components such as water hose inlet and outlet, water hose, valve and heater are excluded from this view not only to simplify the relationship also abnormal noise such as water drainage noise due to water interacting with these components is out of the scope in this analysis.
Via feet Via shaft

Floor Drum
Via damper

Motor

Via shaft

Tub Diaphragm

Frame / Door Pump Perceived noise

Via leaks

Volume/Acoustic Material

Figure 1. Structural decomposition view

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To understand the noise generation mechanisms in the entire system, a system functional view is shown in Figure 2. Motor and pump are the noise source contributing in two aspects, firstly, motor and pump selfradiated noise transmits through frame to overall noise. Secondly, motor and pump exerts structural vibratory power through their attachment points to downstream components. Based on the impedance at the attachment point, certain structural vibratory power is propagated to whole system and excites the resonance in the system. There are three noise transmission mechanisms in the system, in addition to airborne and structure borne noise, aerodynamic noise generated by turbulence flow due to relative movement between tub and drum is also an important noise generation mechanism, which becomes increasingly severe when the spinning speed gets higher.
Tub acoustic power Tub vibration power Drum vibration power Pump acoustic power Pump vibration power Diaphragm vibration power Drum/tub aero power Drum radiated power Diaphragm acoustic power Frame radiated power Frame vibration power

Motor acoustic Power Motor vibration power

Volume/acoustic material Noise

Structural borne

Air borne

Aerodynamic borne

Figure 2. Drum washing machine noise transmission functional decomposition

System noise ( Y1)

Y1 = f ( yi)
i=1

Transmitted noise through leakage (y1)

n

Door radiated noise ( y2)

n

Frame radiated noise (y3)

n

f
i =1

f
i =1

f
i =1

Pump radiated noise x1

Motor radiated noise x2

Tub/drum Tub radiated noise Drum radiated noise aero noise( yy2) (y y3) ( yy4)

Diaphragm noise ( yy5)

n

Frame vibration power ( yy1)

f
i =1

f
i =1

f
i =1

f
i =1

Diaphragm vibration power ( yyy3)

f
i =1

f
i =1

Drum vibration power ( yyy1)

Tub vibration power ( yyy2)

Pump vibration power X4

f
i =1

f
i =1

Motor vibration power x3

Figure 3. Drum washing machine requirements flow down relationship tree

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Once structural and functional decomposition are completed, a relationship tree is developed as shown in Figure 3. This hierarchical relationship tree manifests the power transfer flow and functional power transfer mechanisms among system, subsystem and components. The input/output of each element can be quantified as power that is obtained computationally, experimentally or empirically. Until to this stage, ambiguity of the system has been largely reduced with the clarification of each elements function in entire rather complex system. Once the transfer function among the elements is derived, both system allocation from top to down and system validation from bottom to top can be easily implemented. Knowing the relationship through transfer function among system member elements is critically important throughout product cycle. Even at aftermarket stage, for occurred problem, root cause analysis can be conducted properly attributing to the traceability of the variable inherited in the system.

4. Noise source measurement and transfer function derivation

4.1 Drum washing machine measurement standard.
Similar to ISO3745 sound power measurement standard, a nine-point grid illustrated in Figure 4 is built to measure sound power from a washing machine unit in anechoic room. 4 measurement points are located at the center of each side of a rectangular surface parallel to the bottom of the unit, each side of the rectangular is 1 meter away from and parallel to corresponding frame side panel, and height of rectangular plane is half of the total height of washing machine and 1 meter. Another 4 points are located at the corner of a rectangular surface parallel to the bottom of the unit, but 1 meter above the top surface of the machine, the distance between each line and corresponding frame side panel is also 1 meter, the ninth point is located at the center of second rectangular.

L3 L1 L2

L1: washing machine width. 2a= L1+2.

L2: Washing machine depth. 2b=L2+2, Unit: meter ( m ).

L3: Washing machine height. 2c=L3+1..

Figure 4. Schematic illustration of washing machine sound power measurement setup. 4.2 Airborne noise source measurement
Component level noise is measured at semi-anechoic room by either extracting the component from the system and setup alone or decoupling the components from surrounding elements in the washing machine system. For example, pump is originally connected to frame through bracket, the amount of power

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transmitted to frame structure depends on the isolation configuration between frame and bracket. In this case, a very soft isolation is applied to suppress structural vibration energy in order to measure pump noise only.

4.3 Aerodynamic noise measurement.

Tub back is composed of concave and convex sections, drum back also has irregularities on the surface. During the spinning mode, especially when the spinning speed is very high, significant pressure disturbance due to relative motion between tub back and drum back induces aerodynamic noise that becomes a great concern. Since there is no good way to measure aerodynamic noise directly an indirect approach is utilized subsequently. A specific test rig shown in Figure 5 is designed to remove aerodynamic noise. As shown, a cylindrical mass that has the equivalent mass and moment of inertia effect to the original tub and drum is used as the replacement of tub and drum. It is expected the cylindrical mass minimizes vertex shedding such that aerodynamic effect is in no need to be concerned. Aerodynamic noise can be obtained by subtracting sound power measured from the setup in Figure 5 from that with tub/drum assembly included.

Equivalent mass of tub/drum

Figure 5. Test rig to measure aerodynamic noise

4.4 Structural vibratory input power measurement

As briefly mentioned early, the structure excitation from motor and pump imposing to entire system is described as structural power input to neighboring components. FRF-based method is used to calculate the structure power input. If we know FRFs and the power spectra of the responses, the input powers can be directly determined from [7]:

Pj ( ) =

{G uu } j, j 2 Im[{H} j , j ]
{H} j , j

j, j where is the power spectra of the responses (accelerations) , and frequency response functions.

{G }
uu ,i

(1) are the squared (self)

where subscript j denotes the direction of the force component and Pj is the corresponding input power. This method is applied to calculate structural power input for motor and pump respectively. In experimental setup, self frequency response function (input impedance) is measured using an impact hammer at motor and shaft connection point for motor, pump and frame attachment point for pump in laboratory condition. The vibration data (acceleration) is acquired under real

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operational condition at same location with x, y and z directions that finally is added up to obtain total power. 4.5 Structural vibratory kinetic power measurement
The structural energy in a subsystem is related to the surface velocity by.

E = m v2

(2)

Where, m denotes equivalent mass of the subsystem, and v is the surface velocity. Equation (2) assumes that all of the energy is contained in resonant modes; hence, the potential energy is equal to the kinetic energy and the total energy can be expressed as twice the kinetic energy. If the modal density is low, the accuracy of this method could be in question. Fortunately, in this application, the measurement accuracy of tub and drum structural energy is not critical as both tub and drum are not efficient noise radiator empirically and our interest is focused on noise rather than vibration here.

5. System Tool Implementation and discussions

The system requirements allocation process is to specify allowable energy associated with noise source and path in order for the entire system to meet the overall noise target. An Excel based tool is developed to archive source, path and transfer function, more importantly; the tool is used to facilitate the requirement flow down process. The Excel file containing the main program is shown in Figure 6, for each subsystem or component, total power is calculated by adding contributing power listed below together based on the decomposition diagram. Baseline power is the current state of the acoustic or vibratory power in the washing machine. Each input in excel cell is linked with data tabulated in other worksheets in the same excel file that contains either source or transfer function in 1/3 octave band. Allocated power is the noise level after applying noise reduction methods on certain source or path, the noise mitigation here is represented by a scalar of 0~1 that indicates the acoustical or vibratory power fraction been reduced to. In this case, the noise spectrum of the components before and after the noise reduction is assumed to the same. Second method to reduce the component level power by changing spectrum and level also can be done by going into specific worksheet to do proper modification. Once all the scales are updated, the new allocated sound power is automatically calculated for components and system. The tool also contains database to perform certain degree of concept selection. Different types of motor can be chosen to assess its impact on the system performance as the source. Under insulation and acoustic material configuration, no insulation and no absorbent material, different types of absorbent materials, different portions of insulation, etc., can be applied to system to do noise level and cost tradeoffs. The sensitivity analysis of different acoustic material and insulation is plotted as Figure 7. Baseline configuration without insulation to block the leakage and without acoustic absorbent material attached to the interior frame panel shows the least noise reduction. Foam 2 is superior to foam1 by providing better acoustic absorption coefficient while fully insulated configuration helps to damp the noise in lower frequency.

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Subsystem /component

Baseline power Scale

Allocated power Noise reduction

Figure 6. System tool main program.

Figure 7. Sensitivity analysis of sound level vs. acoustic material and insulation configuration

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The tool can be used for root cause analysis purpose as well since it traces the parameters change among its hierarchical structure. For example, the propagation effect of changing motor structure input power to tub, diaphragm and frame as changed parameters will be highlighted in red. The key to allocate requirements down properly is to rank the noise source and transmission path such that the most efficient noise mitigation methods can be applied. To achieve 6 dBA noise reductions, motor noise power shall be reduced to 40% and aerodynamic noise to 50%. When motor and aerodynamic noise is reduced by 4 dB and 3dB respectively, the total noise reduction is 6 dB if the foam2 is used for frame as shown in Figure 8. This is close to the optimized case because the effect is almost additive. On another hand, if the motor and aerodynamic noise is reduced by 3dB and 4 dB respectively, the total noise reduction is only 4dB. Although aerodynamic noise is higher than motor noise as a noise source, it is more effective to focus on motor noise reduction due to its frequency spectra characteristics. In details, aerodynamic noise can be blocked greatly by frame since most of aerodynamic noise energy is concentrated below 800 Hz. Featured with more pronounced frequency tones higher than 1000 Hz, motor noise can leak out from the gap even portion of the acoustic energy is dissipated by absorption material. Figure 9 depicts noise in higher frequency band is reduced significantly corresponding to the case shown in figure.8.

Figure 8. 6 dB noise reduction achieved by designing motor and aerodynamic noise

Sound Power (dBA )

75 60 45 30 15 0 10 100
Freque ncy ( Hz )

Reduced Baseline

1000

10000

100000

Figure 9. Comparison between baseline and updated system with motor and aerodynamic noise reduced

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6. Tool validation
Instead of putting extra effort to redesign or modify new components such as motor, pump or other subsystem to conduct validation, a simple but representative case was designed for system requirement verification. The tub back was smoothed by simply filling up the cavities (indicated as 2 in Figure 10) to reduce the aerodynamic noise power by 30% based on CFD analysis done in past. And the square cover of the frame bottom was removed to open an extra noise transmission path (indicated as 1 in Figure 10) that increases the noise transmission by three times. The system integration tool predicts the total noise increases 4dB with two structural changes as shown in Figure 10, and the comparison with experiment is plotted in Figure 11. The overall noise level is well correlated; however, discrepancies exist at certain frequencies. Around 500 Hz, new configuration of smoothed tub back reduced the tonal noise significantly. At higher frequencies, certain motor frequencies are still pronounced due to reduced acoustic material and insulation material. The tool is validated within the accuracy that can give users confidence to utilize the tool for sensitivity analysis, requirements specification and tradeoffs among noise mitigation concepts. The physics driving the discrepancies at specific frequencies is well explained by the configuration changes.

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Smoothed

2
Figure 10. System performances with frame bottom hole open and tub back cavities filled
Even this current tool demonstrated accuracy to be implemented in design process, one point worthwhile to mention is the applicability of the tools. This tool treats transfer function among the system elements as one of the system characteristics. Thus, this tool can only be applied to the system with small variation from baseline configuration. Otherwise, the transfer function shall be updated to accommodate system variation to enable valid requirements allocation. By default, it is the limitation of this tool if the transfer function is derived by experiments or empirically. And this paper intends to demonstrate the requirement allocation process using systematic tool. Going forwards, a system model-based approach is preferred to derive the transfer 1 function to enhance the applicability of the tool. Moreover, a validated physics-based system model will help to understand the fundamentals of the coupled noise and vibration transmission mechanisms among the system, which often becomes impossible using experimental approach. A virtual design tool also makes

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it possible to perform variation analysis to identify robust design parameters in very short product development cycle.
60 50
SPL ( dBA )

40 30 20 10 31.5 80 200 500 1250 3150 8000

Frequency ( Hz )
Predicted : 61.6dBA Measured : 62.1dBA

Figure 11. Experimental validation for system performance

7. Summary
This paper emphasizes on presenting a system approach for drum washing machine to perform requirements allocation at very early design stage. Noise source and transmission path is characterized experimentally with specific designed test rig. Although motor noise and aerodynamic are dominant noise source, motor noise is a much concern than aerodynamic noise since the latter can be mitigated greatly by frame structure. A case is demonstrated how to achieve 6 dB overall noise reduction by allocating 4dB reduction to motor and 3 dB to aerodynamic. 4 dB noise increase by removing frame bottom cover and filling up the tub back cavities designed by the tool was validated by experiments, which confirmed the feasibility of the process delivering right specification for system performance.

Reference
[1] B. Sanchez, J.Liado, Sound power emission of a washing machine cabinet. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2006. 119 (5).3386 [2] B. Sanchez, J.Liado, Characterization of the noise emitted by a washing-machine due to the pump, Paris, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2002, 112 (5), 2372 [3] D. C. Conrad, The fundamentals of automatic washing machine design based upon dynamic constrain. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Michigan. 1994. [4] O.S. Turkay, B.Kiray. Formulation and implementation of parametric optimization of a washing machine suspension system.Mechanical system and signal processing. 1995, 9(4),359-377 [5] S.Bae, J.M.Lee, Y.J.Kang, etc., Dynamic analysis of an automatic washing machine with hydraulic balancer. Journal of Sound & Vibration, 2002. 257 (1), 3-18. [6] T.Mori, A. Tokaoka, Achieving a vehicle level sound quality target by a cascade to system level noise and vibration targets. SAE 2005 Noise and vibration. 2005-01-2394. [7]. R.Lyon, Statistical energy analysis of dynamic system: Theory and applications. The MIT press, 1975.