HyperWorks Empowers Global Appliance Manufacturer to Utilize New Material for Enhanced, Cost-Effective Product
Technology Category
- Sensors - Environmental Sensors
- Sensors - Temperature Sensors
Applicable Industries
- Electronics
- Life Sciences
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Virtual Prototyping & Product Testing
- Virtual Reality
About The Customer
The customer in this case study is Suzhou Samsung Electronics Co., a Korean-Chinese joint venture that develops and produces major home appliances, including refrigerators and washing machines. The company is constantly seeking ways to lead the competition by reducing the volume of material in its products without sacrificing top-rate performance. For cost control, the company was considering changing the composition of its refrigerator door covers for certain models from ABS engineering plastic to high-impact polystyrene, or HIPS. However, during physical reliability testing, the HIPS covers exhibited cracking, leading the company to seek a solution to this issue.
The Challenge
Suzhou Samsung Electronics Co., a Korean-Chinese joint venture that develops and produces major home appliances, was facing a challenge with its refrigerator door covers. The company was considering changing the composition of its refrigerator door covers for certain models to reduce costs. Traditionally, ABS engineering plastic was used to create the upper and lower door covers. However, for cost control, the company sought to use high-impact polystyrene, or HIPS, instead of ABS for the injection-molded covers. Unfortunately, during physical reliability testing, the HIPS covers cracked during the temperature cycling process. The cracking was observed in the middle of the door cover’s top surface, beginning at the front edge of the door cover. The engineers at Suzhou Samsung performed an analysis of the material, structure, and injection-molding process to identify the cause of the cracking. They found that the change in material was one factor contributing to the cracking issue.
The Solution
To analyze the stress on the door cover during thermal expansion and contraction, the engineers used HyperMesh and RADIOSS, both part of Altair’s HyperWorks suite of computer-aided engineering tools. These tools allowed the engineers to create a computerized simulation of the refrigerator door cover temperature field. The simulation was separated into two conditions: a drop from room temperature to low temperature and an increase from room temperature to high temperature. The simulation analysis showed that the fracture stemmed from contraction during the low-temperature cycle. After changing the material from ABS to HIPS, the safety coefficient declined and the maximum deformation increased. The engineers then evaluated ways to prevent the cracking, beginning with increasing the thickness of the door cover’s top surface and adding stiffeners in the form of vertical and horizontal ribs. The second proposal, which extended the rib length and height, proved to increase the door cover safety coefficient to 2.0, which was equal to that of ABS material.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Remote Temperature Monitoring of Perishable Goods Saves Money
RMONI was facing temperature monitoring challenges in a cold chain business. A cold chain must be established and maintained to ensure goods have been properly refrigerated during every step of the process, making temperature monitoring a critical business function. Manual registration practice can be very costly, labor intensive and prone to mistakes.
Case Study
Cloud Solution for Energy Management Platform-Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric required a cloud solution for its energy management platform to manage high computational operations, which were essential for catering to client requirements. As the business involves storage and analysis of huge amounts of data, the company also needed a convenient and scalable storage solution to facilitate operations efficiently.
Case Study
Leveraging the IoT to Gain a Competitive Edge in International Competition
Many large manufacturers in and outside Japan are competing for larger market share in the same space, expecting a growing demand for projectors in the areas of entertainment, which requires glamor and strong visual performance as well as digital signage that can attract people’s attention. “It is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate ourselves with stand-alone hardware products,” says Kazuyuki Kitagawa, Director of Service & Support at Panasonic AVC Networks. “In order for Panasonic to grow market share and overall business, it is essential for us to develop solutions that deliver significant added value.” Panasonic believes projection failure and quality deterioration should never happen. This is what and has driven them to make their projectors IoT-enabled. More specifically, Panasonic has developed a system that collects data from projectors, visualizes detailed operational statuses, and predicts issues and address them before failure occurs. Their projectors are embedded with a variety of sensors that measure power supply, voltage, video input/ output signals, intake/exhaust air temperatures, cooling fan operations, and light bulb operating time. These sensors have been used to make the projector more intelligent, automatically suspending operation when the temperature rises excessively, and automatically switching light bulbs. Although this was a great first step, Panasonic projectors were still not equipped with any capability to send the data over a network.
