Optimum design of a heat-exchanger-fan casing of clothes dryer using the taguchi method

This study is carried out to get the high flowrate of a Heat-Exchanger (HE) fan through an optimum condition of a fan casing. The control factors in the present study are the orifice inlet diameter, the orifice inlet clearance, the cut-off angle, and the cut-off clearance. The goal of this study is to select the best combination of each control factor of the HE fan casing with a minimum variability and to obtain a linear relationship between the flowrate and the number of revolution. Thus, the parameter design of the Taguchi method is adopted for robust design by a dynamic characteristic analysis using orthogonal arrays and S/N ratios. The flowrate measurements are conducted by using a small-sized fan tester according to the orthogonal array L9(34). In the present study, the flowrate under an optimum condition having a set of satisfies with the linear equation y=0.0039 · M as to the number of revolution, and the flowrate is improved by about 44.4 (%) as compared with the current condition