Abstract

The washing machine has become an integral part of our urban daily life. We have a vertical Axis washing machine (VA) and a Horizontal axis washing machine (HA) that are popular among the large portion of the customer using the washing machine. Year on year the expectation of the customers are raising in terms of the water usage and energy rating for running these machines. So it becomes of utmost importance to have a very efficient machine to wash our clothes with very less water as much as possible. While the machine cleans our clothes efficiently with the right amount of detergent, detergent dispensing in washing machines is a very critical step to determine the wash quality of the clothes. In today’s scenario, we have powder and liquid detergent used by everyone for washing the clothes in the washing machine. The amount of detergent getting dissolved with the water becomes more critical. The improper mixtures result in detergent residual in the dispenser and affecting the wash performance of the machine. This project aims to predict early in the design cycle, the performance of the complete dispenser assembly which includes powder/liquid detergent, softener, and bleach compartment by monitoring water flow using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methodology. In this paper, water flow distribution is studied for Softener and detergent chambers. Using the Euler-Euler approach with Volume of Fluid (VOF) method in Commercially available Ansys Fluent solver. This assessment shows the simulation prediction has a good correlation with the physical test results for the Softener chamber which extended for the detergent chamber also. Leveraging this prediction at an early stage of the design will help us to prevent detergent clogging in the detergent chamber and provide an optimized design of the dispenser. The study encompasses developing a guideline for the simulation by identifying the optimum design requirements for the nozzle location/shape for the detergent chamber to avoid clogging of the detergents in the dispenser and the amount of water flow required without splashing in the dispenser drawer which will not show in leakage of water. Simulation is useful to monitor critical zones prone to clogging/residual of detergent in the dispenser. Design optimization is based on water coverage and impinging velocity.