Experimental and Numerical Investigation into Flow and Noise Performances of Pipe Flow Driven by Centrifugal Ice-Making Fan in Household Refrigerator

With an increase in demand for high-quality refrigerators, noise is recognized as one of the main performance indicators and a fan is one of most contributing noise sources. Various types of fans are used in a refrigerator. Especially, the ice-making fan generates more unpleasant noise because it operates irregularly and its noise is directly transmitted through the pipe outside a refrigerator. In this study, the flow and noise performance of a centrifugal ice-making fan and pipe system are investigated. First, a Virtual Fan Tester (VFT) based on the CFD techniques is developed and its validity is verified through the comparison with actual fan tester. In order to quantitatively evaluate the performance of the ice-making fan unit, the energy flux inside the pipe and the radiated noise levels from the system are computed and analyzed as indicators of the flow and noise performances, respectively. By using these, the part in the pipe is identified to have most adverse effects on the performances and the related flow field are analyzed in detail. Based on this analysis result, a new design is proposed to improve the performance of ice-making fan unit and its validity is confirmed through the numerical and experimental analysis.