Study on the noise of freezer fan

Recently, sound comfort has become important in residential houses. One of the main sources of indoor noise is home appliances. Noise levels in household appliances are increasingly attracting attention from manufacturers and customers. Legislation is becoming more severe on acceptable noise levels and low noise is a major marketing point for many products. Therefore, reduction in noise from a refrigerator is necessary and noise-free operation is becoming the preferred choice of customers in the domestic refrigerators. Together with the compressor, the fan is a source of noise that contributes the most to the refrigerator's overall noise level. In large refrigerators, circulating fans must rotate faster to generate larger flow rates. Such high-speed rotation causes fan noise to be of greater concern than other sources of noise in a refrigerator. In this study, freezer fan noise of a no-frost type refrigerator was studied by numerical and experimental methods. A coupled numerical model of the freezer fan compartment was created with the ABAQUS finite elements analysis and simulation software. In the numerical model evaporator cover, fan louver and air cavity were modeled as coupled and flexible. All the numerical models in this study have been validated with experiments. In the end, an experimentally validated numerical model for the freezer fan compartment was obtained.