Abstract

Among the common spaces of a house or an apartment, the kitchen has traditionally been a place where families and friends gather and share while cooking, eagerly spending time in this space. Several renowned home appliance manufacturers have identified this tendency. As such, they have developed and set new benchmarks for kitchen device aesthetics, quality and functionality. Nowadays, home appliance manufacturers promote a clear integration of their offered devices within the kitchen architecture with focus on high quality materials, simple cleaning, operation effectiveness, flexibility of installation and most relevant, quiet operation for the best possible user experience. A quiet operation is especially relevant for cooktop extractors. Conventional as well as integrated cooktop extractors from premium manufacturers reach high sound pressure levels during operation. Especially at the maximum extraction level, this can heavily affect user acoustic comfort and diminish the user satisfaction towards the device. The key component of the cooktop extractor affecting the acoustic comfort is the blower fan unit, which represents the dominant noise source while providing the required airflow performance for a correct system operation. In this regard, we present within the scope of this publication, a Lattice-Boltzmann based transient flow simulation able to assess the acoustic comfort level of the user in terms of the noise levels emitted by a conventional cooktop extractor. The simulated device is equipped with a blower fan unit as the main component to achieve the required airflow performance. The proprietary FIND module (Flow-Induced Noise Sources and Detection) is implemented to identity the dominant noise sources. These results are used to modify the system and reduce the noise levels emitted by the conventional cooktop extractor. The improved system acoustic performance leads to an enhanced user experience while providing the required airflow for the optimal performance of the device.